Days by the Cornish Sea
A few of my favourite photographs of Cornwall are of the same bay in completely different weather. One day there’s a stripe of blue sea and families making their way down with towels and buckets. Another day you can see white water almost the whole way across the bay. Both feel like home to me.
Porthcothan Bay is where I live and where I make Zamsoe jewellery. I wanted to share some of the Cornwall I see here, and some of the things I find myself looking for whenever I’m near the sea.
The summer days you can almost hear
You might remember the beach first by its sounds. The crack of a windbreak going into the sand. Someone calling from the shallows. The rustle of a bag as somebody realises there’s one sandwich left.
The best bit can be right at the end, when the towels are damp and everyone has had enough sun, and somebody asks if there’s time for one last paddle. Somehow there always is.
When the Atlantic gets loud
In autumn and winter the bay can look different within the space of a walk. A break in the clouds lights up one stretch of water, then the light goes and you notice how white the waves are against the dark rocks.
I like a photograph that leaves a little of the weather in it. A blurred edge of grass in the wind, or two people walking with their shoulders hunched in exactly the same way. You can almost feel what the day was like.
What we notice when we slow down
Beach-combing with friends or family is a wonderfully slow way to get anywhere. Everyone spots something different. Someone finds a shell with a perfect spiral, someone else spots a pebble with a hole in it, and the person who was striding ahead is suddenly crouched beside a rock pool with everyone else.
There’s something lovely about being called back to see what someone else has found. Years later, you might remember who called you over as clearly as what was lying in the sand.
From the shoreline to the studio
Those small details are the ones I come back to in my work. A shell shape can make me think of walking with my eyes on the sand. A tiny sailing boat takes my eye back out to the water. In the studio, I put some of the earrings into little corked bottles and draw backgrounds by hand for some of our illustrated pieces.
A piece of jewellery can make a particular day come back to you. I like the thought of someone opening a little bottle and thinking straight away of the person they’d go back to that beach with.
Discover Zamsoe’s nautical jewellery or see our shell earrings in a keepsake bottle.
