Published monthly by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Connecticut, 



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Entered as Second-Class Matter June 12, 1909. at Sound Beach Post Office, under Act of March 3, 1897. 



Vol 



IX 



JULY, 1916 



Number 2 



Ornamental Uses of Shells. 



BY L. P. GRATACAP, NEW YORK CITY. 



Shells, apart from the unique pro- 

 duct of the pearl, have often been made 

 serviceable in garden and house and 

 for personal ornament. The old-fash- 

 ioned garden bed with its fence of 

 clamshells is a very homely instance 

 of the former, and the basket and box, 

 encrusted with variegated shells, in 

 less sophisticated days extorted an un- 

 feigned admiration. The popular em- 

 ployment of the lustrous or iridescent 

 surfaces of shells, often unsuspected 

 beneath their dull repellent epidermis, 

 has attained today a very w^ide recog- 

 nition, and the industrial use, also orna- 

 mental in its purpose, of the fresh- 

 water clam for the manufacture of but- 

 tons assumes economic importance. 



Shell ornament when it assumes a 

 personal decorative purpose is certain- 

 ly very ancient. Prehistoric remains 

 demonstrate this conclusively, as 

 shown in buried necklaces which not 

 infrequently, as in central France, are 

 formed even of fossil shells. The real- 

 ly extraordinary afifection for shell or- 

 naments among the aboriginal races, 

 as well as the admiration, exhibited in 

 parlor bric-a-brac, for shell flowers 

 among modern races, illustrates the 

 appeal which these objects make to 

 the eve. In the Board of Trade returns 



for the United Kingdom, in 1897 the 

 value of the imported shells (which in- 

 cluded tortoise shell) was about three 

 millions of dollars, and while an appre- 

 ciable amount of this represents indus- 

 trial uses — as the shell powder mixed 



ORNAMENTAL SHELL BASKET MADE BY THE 

 INDIANS OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 



in the finer grades of porcelain — yet a 

 large remainder is attributable to the 

 vagaries of taste. 



The problem of determining the 

 chronological succession of aesthetic 



Copyright 1916 by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Conn. 



