any living creature and my stash was, indeed,
tiny. I registered humans’ impact on seemingly
pristine beaches by adding a few objects that
have an ironic beauty of their own: a fishing lure
with savage hooks, fragments of smashed
surfboard, a blue bottle cap stamped with the
words ‘clean fresh taste’.
I’m no artist but I took an aesthetic pleasure
in laying out my collection, appreciating the
shapes, colours, textures and salty smells, and
deciding how to arrange them in my drawer. The
orange feather directed placement of an orange
leaf, orange slivers of shell and tile, and the
silvery-orange lure. Leaves, sticks and cuttlefish
echoed each other’s long curves. A two-holed
plastic button sat with a round shell that had a
natural hole in its edge. White, pink, blue, green,
purple, brown created highlights and contrast
across the tray. I threw away pieces of weed that
would rot and had begun to stink, and anything
too big, but I allowed a wooden wedge and a
spray of leaves to overhang their spaces.
To my surprise the bluebottle, which I had
expected to burst or crumble, dried into a
translucent football that I sat on the ‘Australia’
spoon as a final touch, turning the drawer into a
satisfyingly kitsch souvenir of my holiday. I called
it my Museum of Tiny Things.
In its primitive way my drawer is reminiscent
of the precious cabinets of curiosities gathered
by natural historians as they travelled the world
in earlier centuries. It recalls the beautiful
shadow boxes of found objects assembled by
the reclusive American 20th-century artist
Joseph Cornell, an obsessive collector of travel
memorabilia even though he never left home.
There’s something transformative about curating
and displaying the most ordinary items.
When I posted photographs on Facebook,
friends responded with passionate delight. ‘Am
adoring F