Thursday, June 21, 2012

Kettle's Yard: pebbles

Alongside the art collection, the sculptures, drawings, books, old vinyl records and other artefacts at Kettle's Yard is an equally thoughtfully made and clearly well-loved collection of natural and other found objects: seed pods, pieces of driftwood, roots and stems, bones and feathers and shells and, most of all, pebbles.  Indeed, it claims: 


They are all shapes and sizes,


placed in different containers,


alongside all kinds of other objects, 


sometimes on top of other stones,


on all kinds of surfaces,


often in circles and spirals,


some of them look like other things,


and some of them just look like pebbles.

~

12 comments:

herhimnbryn said...

OOOh, this place is on our list now when we are over in the uk later this year!

We have ( or rather I have) Many pebbles around the house. I do like the 'wabi-sabi' aspect of them.

Zhoen said...

The beauty of small stones, every child on a beach knows this.

Ellena said...

Pebbles fascinate me. I was given one about the size of the one on the right side of the last picture, very pale green hue. Mine is dark green and one side has an indent as if it had been rubbbed with a thumb for thousand years.
Each evening a lay my little thyroid pill in this pebble bed, sit a glass of water beside it and at 5 in the morning I blindly reach for my medication.

Sheila said...

Oh, I just love this! I want to touch them! Just today I gave a client a little fake pebble inscribed with the word "hope," and she said how nice it is to feel a pebble between your fingers.

They are lovely.

Anonymous said...

Ooh, I love pebbles!

Kettle's Yard sounds like such a fascinating place :)

Unknown said...

An inspiring use to which to put pebbles. To see them loosely collected in a bowl always seems a waste. When you think about it, each is a piece of sculpture in its own right. You did have a fruitful visit to Kettle's Yard.

zephyr said...

Oh i love these photos, Lucy...as much as i know i would love the place. If only i could jump on a plane tomorrow, rent a car, etc etc.

The first thought i had: Oh! i must artfully arrange some of my pebble collection!

The second thought which rushed in so quickly it nearly cut of the first thought: Jim and Helen clearly did not live with cats.

Anil P said...

Louvre of the Pebble is as apt a name as it can get for the collection.

Who can possibly forget pebbles, the milestones of growing up, the tangible we brought home because we couldn't bring the water - river, stream, rivulet home.

Pebbles, indeed.

Lucy said...

Thanks for so many lovely responses, pebbles obviously have resonance!

Zephyr - indeed, that made me laugh! In fact you rather have the feeling they didn't live with many inconvenient and chaos creating elements of ordinary life... perhaps matter for another post!

marly youmans said...

I'm afraid that I came home from Wales with a large number of pebbles (one of which I bit on later, thinking it one of those chocolates made to look like stone--very bright!) which joined their friends from other places. I have entirely too many magpie treasures!

HKatz said...

I love the meditative visual delights in the post - the textures, geometrical patterns and colors.

the polish chick said...

i think what stayed with me most out of kettle's yard was the perfect pebble spiral and the bowl of darkest-to-lightest pebbles. i remember spending a couple of weeks at my parents' place on lake huron shortly after my trip to london and trying my darndest to create something similar with lake stones. . . i believe i might still to this day. it was so very simple and so very beautiful.