Ornamental Uses of Shells 



By L. P. GRATACAP 



SHELLS, apart from the unique 

 product of the pearl, have often 

 been made serviceable in garden 

 and house and for personal ornament. 

 The old-fashioned garden bed with its 

 fence of clamshells is a very homely in- 

 stance 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 be- 

 neath their dull repellent epidermis, has 

 attained today a very wide recogni- 

 tion, and the industrial use, also orna- 

 mental in its purpose, of the fresh-water 

 clam for the maniifactin-e of buttons 

 assumes economic importance. 



A glance at the catalogues of various 

 pearl manufacturing companies " re- 

 ^'eals an extraordinary aptitude for in\'en- 

 tion, and illustrates the great adaptability 

 of shells to service. Perhaps the most 

 striking and certainly the most testhetic 

 use of shells in ornament illustrated in 

 the American Museum, is the remark- 

 able shell turban that crowns the head of 

 the Tahitian fire-walker in the hall of 

 the South Sea Islands. It is composed 

 of two wreaths of densely bedded gra\- 

 greenish, purple-tipped Partulas, and 

 forms an artistic unity with the naked 

 figure and the barbaric ceremony. The 



The headpiece drawing is taken from the basic 

 design of the mural frieze in color around the shell hall 

 of the American Museum. This design by Mr. Albert 

 Operti, combines seaweeds with Atlantic Coast pecten 

 and conch shells. 



use of shells is fiu-ther illustrated in the 

 Museum's collections by the Ilclicina and 

 Cassidulus necklaces of the Samoan Is- 

 lands, the shell bracelets (Trochns) of 

 New Guinea, and those of the Philippine 

 Islands, made from the apex of Conus 

 liieratus. 



Mr. A. D. Gabay has presented a small 

 collection of polished shells to the Amer- 

 ican Museum's section of conchology, 

 which reveals the softened brilliancy of 

 the sea clam (Mclcagrina margariiifera) 

 and the metallic splendors of the aba- 

 lone. A few ornaments cut out of the 

 mother-of-pearl and from the burnished 

 surfaces of the abalone, serve to show 

 the availability of this material in a 

 kind of bastard jewelry, as well as its 

 more legitimate employment in objects 

 of convenience, such as paper cutters. 



Among these specimens is a very 

 curious series of pearl blisters, or deli- 

 cate white films encasing minute organ- 

 isms, among the latter tiny crabs whose 

 outlines are revealed under the nacreous 

 coating in a very unmistakable way. 



Shell ornament when it assumes a 

 personal decorative purpose is certainly 

 very ancient. Prehistoric remains dem- 

 onstrate this conclusively, as shown in 

 buried necklaces which not infrequently, 

 as in central France, are formed even of 

 fossil shells. The really extraordinary 

 affection for shell ornaments among the 

 aboriginal races, as well as the admira- 

 tion, exhibited in parlor bric-a-brac, for 

 shell flowers among modern races, illus- 



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