JESTER

A delightful little jester which I bought in a small hilltown in Umbria in 1999

STRANGE MASK

I bought a pair of these identical masks in a boot sale. I don't know what they're made of.
They each have two thin iron bars fixed to the back of the cast. They have a strange haunting feeling.

ARTIST'S MANNEQUIN

This is a beautiful wooden object that I have drawn many times.

TWO CAPOTS

As anyone who plays the guitar knows, the capot is a wonderful little device for changing the pitch of the strings by clamping it across the neck. I bought the one on the left by mistake.
Perhaps it is for a bass guitar. There are many types of capot you can get but these are
my favourites. Beautiful little bits of kit.

PINE CONE

A fine pine cone retrieved from the ground at Bedgebury Pinetum,
which holds the national conifer collection.

SITGES SHELL

A shell that will always remind me of Sitges and those sunny February weeks
when life seemed possible once more

SANDSTONE AMMONITE

This is one of three large ammonites I have found in my life and the only one still in my possession.

The other two were both chalk ammonites and both found on the South Downs above Steyning in Sussex. The first, when I was at school, I found with a boy named Taws. We were clambering up the face of the smaller chalk pit near our boarding school when we noticed a curved outcrop of chalk that looked promising. Using our geological hammers, we spent hours hacking out this huge lump of chalk and somehow getting it down the cliff. The moment I remember so vividly was when we used a hammer and a metal wedge on the top of the lump and the whole top part came away to reveal this amazing ammonite form (no shell was remaining, as far as I remember). Somehow we manhandled back all the way down the hill to school and showed it to our geography treacher with great excitement. I believe it ended up in the school collection.

The second chalk anmonite I discovered many years later in the bigger chalk pit outside Steyning, which used at one point to be used industrially. There were still a few rusting sheds and fences left and this buge bowl of jumbled up chunks of chalk, which was a great place to go exploring. There had been a sharp frost and many of the chalk lumps were shattered. I was just going along at random, turning things over, and grabbed this lump to move it. The whole top came way as before and there was another huge chalk ammonite, which again I manhandled down the hill, this time back to my family house.

The ammonite pictured is a sandstone one on which there is quite a lot of the original shell intact in the centre. This I found just lying in a field just near where we were living in Castle Cary in Somerset. The patch of field looked very ancient and there were lots of interesting-looking rocks. This ammonite was literally there for all to see. One of the most exciting finds of my life.

TINY CHAIN LINK PURSE

Part of my mother's collection, which I was always intrigued by. It's a tiny and delicate construction of minute chain mail with a silver clasp in which are two tiny purple drops. Eminently impractical, it would certainly hold very little coinage, particularly as coins were generally larger at that time. (I've always imagined it was Edwardian but I may be completely wrong there). In fact, paper money then was about the size of a single page of the current Times newspaper. No doubt rescued from some church jumble sale or knickknack shop.

CATALAN COUNTRY BEE POLLEN

Purchased in a supermarket in Sitges, Southern Spain, I am reliably
informed these are the dried pollen pouches that you see on bees' legs when they are among the flowers collecting the stuff. Exactly how the pouches are obtained I perhaps don't want to know.
Apparently, Muhammud Ali was keen on eating them as they are full of goodness.
You couldn't get a better recommendation. I am tasting them sparingly.

UNUSUAL CIGARETTE LIGHTER

This lighter, no longer functional, was abandoned at my house one night by friend Paul.
He always had the strangest lighters and this was one of the best.

BLUE MEANIE

A rubber Blue Meanie given to me by my son Louis for my birthday one year. Always raises a smile when I look at it, reminds me of him and the trip we made once when he was much younger to the Yellow Submarine shop in Brighton's Kemptown, now sadly no longer there.

ANCHOVY BOX

Not only were these some of the best anchovies I have ever tasted but the jaunty colored box obviously struck a childhood chord. It also reminds me of my trips to Lisbon, where I went to the maritime museum and fell in love with the style of the ships and boats.

TRAPPED SHELL IN CHALK

Ever since I was a boy, when much of time was spent on the beach
on England's South coast, I have always collected stones, most of which got thrown away. This piece in chalk, shaped by sea and creatures, I found in recent years and kept because it has a shell trapped in the central hole.
Perhaps the creature who inhabited the shell and has now escaped or been eaten, was tiny when it found its way into the chalk crater and then, as it grew, it was unable to get out. That's what I like to think anyway.

DANDELION PAPER WEIGHT

This dandelion paperweight was bought in Lewes antique shop for my late mother. Intrigued as to how you get a dandelion seed head in what appears to be a lump of solid glass. Smaller pic shows the maker's rose trademark, which looks to be made of metal, also embedded in the glass.