Sea Specimens

Before museums, there was the cabinet, and in the cabinet, a nautilus. Sea specimens, seashells, coral, fossil shells and other natural forms, come from the oceans of Indonesia, the Philippines, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea and the Americas. Spiral nautilus and conch shells, branching coral and sea urchins were among the first objects gathered in the European cabinet of curiosities, prized for their geometry and color. Fossilized shells some fifty to seventy million years old show the same forms turned to stone.

Pale nacre, salt-bleached coral and ribbed shell bring light and pattern at small scale. A shell on a bathroom shelf, coral under a glass dome, a row of specimens along a window ledge: the sea’s order, indoors, without the tide.