By Jemima Skala
I recently packed up my childhood bedroom and found all sorts of items I had accumulated over those years: pin badges and fabric scraps; old clothes and novelty beer bottles. I have always been a collector but my gathering lacks discipline and focus.
I envy those who are drawn only to vintage matchboxes, or French cigarette cases, or haunted portraits of Victorian children. Instead of nailing my flag to the mast, I collect it all, my disparate miniature collections growing in corners of my flat awaiting the time when they can be properly displayed.
The Shell Grotto in Margate, south-east England, stands as the ultimate testament to the power of collecting. Discovered by accident in 1835 and now Grade-I listed, its 70 feet of winding subterranean tunnels are plastered floor to ceiling with 4.6mn shells of varying types and sizes, almost all of which would have been available locally.
When I first visited a few years ago, I was entranced by the rooms, empty of furniture and open to the elements. The different chambers snake into each other, a meandering burrow. I was overwhelmed by the dazzling patterns, how they were amorphous from afar but offered far more intricate detail up close.
I don’t want to live in the Shell Grotto per se, but upon emerging into the sunlight again I was left with a conviction that I want to create something like that, something a bit baffling but that means something to me.
There is debate about when the Shell Grotto was created and what it was originally used for. A pagan shrine? A folly? A smuggler’s hide-out? But in many ways, its purpose is moot. I love the Shell Grotto as a symbol of the human instinct to preserve, to create, to latch on to something and never let it go.
I hope I will one day have enough conviction to dedicate entire rooms to my collections. My fantasy home is a large house, a world away from the flat I currently inhabit, with winding corridors, basements, garrets and hidden passageways. I have always loved statues of the Virgin Mary, so I would have an entryway dedicated to examples from around the world, with a huge marble Mary as the centrepiece so that you're greeted with a blessing, devotional but with a touch of irreverence. Or I could transform my living room with exquisite crystal chandeliers from various periods and places.
Gift giving becomes easier for friends and loved ones when you have a collection; my partner’s parents have an orange wall in their house and for a few years were given exclusively orange things for every birthday and Christmas, from a vintage 1970s orange candle to a round space-age TV.
My own home of curios and oddities would be filled by trinkets picked up by me and my friends on our travels around the world, a collection constantly in flux and ever expanding. And, of course, in my fantasy, dusting is not necessary — everything would be always spotless.
Maybe my fantasy is not as much about pinning down myself and my interests, but about allowing them to be on display and open to change. As with the Shell Grotto, the reasons behind my collections would fade with time to be simply accepted as a visual feast and quirk of humanity.
Photography: Courtesy of Shell Grotto
