The Contemplation of the Wanderer

Art Direction / Prop Styling: Emma Witter
Photography: Will Bunce
TEXT: Aurore Phipps
Jewellery Design: Emily Frances Barrett

*Pearl Arrow, Silver and Brass Brooch; Porcupine Quill Dangle Earrings, Silver.*

For the past hour and a half, she had been standing upon this grey rock, shivering in her dark green overcoat, her dress drenched in sea water. Some strands of her hair were rebelliously caught in the wind while others were still stuck on her wet forehead, tracing wavy and dusky sillons on her skin. The sky was not as welcoming as it had been earlier, when she could still hear seagulls sing. At the present time, all she could hear were the whooshing of the waves crashing on the shore and the distant rumble of a deeper, more elusive sea. She was not scared of the deep. She was the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of fishermen. All stocky and austere men whose faces had been wrinkled and beaten by time and seasalt. Their calloused hands told the stories of their nautical adventures and that of the poverty they desperately tried to escape through back-breaking labour. These men had also been drunkards, sloshed and smashed at the pier down in Newhaven. They had been described as bawbags by some, honest saints by others but as far as their fisherwives were concerned, they were just men. Men that shouted at them or laughed with and at them.

*Amber Chain Maile Bracelet, Silver; Silver Shell Bracelet; Loot Hoops, Silver and Brass.*

Our heroine, still standing on her rock, kept mistaking each gush and rise of the sea for the creature she was impatiently awaiting. If only she could twiddle her thumbs to pass the time! But twiddle, she could not. The cold air had prompted her to hide her hands under, as her mother often called them, her oxters. With her arms crossed, she started singing a song her matriarch still sang to her at night. A song she believed her mother made up, inspired by her great-grandmother’s tales attached to an 18th Century “dreg song”. It was used on three-man boats that collected oysters by dredging. They said that they were so effective at scraping oysters from the seafloor that fishermen believed that said songs would charm the oysters from their beds. Perhaps, she herself could charm the creature from his bed.

Mudlark rings: Moss Agate and Cross Pearl Silver Ring; Blue Stars Pottery Fragment and Silver Ball Chain Ring; Blue and White Pottery Fragment Silver Chain Ring; River Glass and Fresh Water Pearl Silver Chain Ring.

*Beat Silver Trinket Brooch; Small Shell Kilt Pin, Silver; Ceramic Fragment Silver Brooch; Silver Fork Trinket Brooch.*

She was still singing when he appeared. Half-man, half-fish, piercing through the water like an aquatic lightning bolt. His long iridescent fishtail was covered in scales. When he slid and dragged his mythological body made out of flesh, blood, fish and human bones, on the rock next to hers, she let her eyes wander on his wide and muscular torso. His skin, impossibly pale, seemed almost translucent under the strange colours of the sunset. His long white hair contrasted with the youthful nature of his facial features. As if someone had resurrected a lost relic and cast a youth spell on it. When she had first met him, she believed he was a god and feared he would punish her for sins she could barely name yet.

*River Glass and Fresh Water Pearl; Silver Chain Ring.*

She did not know much about life. She was an only child, sheltered by surprisingly protective parents who were still haunted by the perils they had faced while working on the ships of yesteryear. She knew she was capable of committing them but she could not, for the life of her, identify which were the ones she was most susceptible to be guilty of. When fear had made way for inquisitiveness, she asked him a thousand questions. She had heard countless tales of sailors falling into the sea, and drowning in the arms of enchanting yet evil mermaids. She thought to herself…

“Is this god going to end me and take my soul into the depth of the ocean?”

But they would soon become friends, and while the sun was slowly being replaced by the moon, she stared at him, lovingly, tenderly, waiting to be engulfed by his mystical presence all over again.