When we opened our Clare Street shop we were well aware of the memories many people cherished of its previous life as Greene's bookshop. Generations of students and their parents had queued there for their schoolbooks. By all accounts, the queues went out the door and along the street at one end and up the stairs at the other. When we took over the shop, the bookshelves on the stairs had long gone. This left us with a lovely wide staircase and a lot of walls. As it happens, these stairs and walls make the most wonderful environment for browsing. There is something about a wide staircase that lends itself to artworks on the walls. Given our proximity to the National Gallery of Ireland, we can offer a speed-date or micro-dose of fine art, while at the same time indulging our own interest in Irish 19th and 20th century artworks by lesser-known artists.
When a friend said that she wanted to temporarily exhibit some artworks - 'shell pictures' was how she referred to them - we were very intruiged. Not fitting into the more appreciated category of 'painterly' art that normally goes into a frame, shell pictures might well be dismissed as 'craft', one of the traditional put-downs, and often a subtle way of implying womens' work as somehow of lesser value.
In any case, the shell pictures in question were made by Beatrice Somerville-Large (1913-2012). She made these pieces throughout her long life, intricately and accurately assembling shells into patterns and representational scenes. There has long been a tradition in Ireland for using native sea shells to decorate 'shell-houses'. Beatrice instead created 'pictures' using shells. Interestingly, many of the pictures depict botanical scenes such as meadows, pond scenes and bouquets. Another theme of her work is swags or garlands, based on 18th century plasterwork, which in its turn was inspired by Roman garlands and wreaths.
There are 17 pieces on display in Clare Street for the month of June, most of them in their original frames dating from the 1970s and 1980s. Irish linens and tweeds have been used as backing and framing materials, chosen carefully to reflect the colours of the shells. All of the pieces are from private collections. Interestingly, Beatrice Somerville-Large did not sell her work: she generally donated it to charitable causes for the purposes of fundraising.
