Collecting The enthusiasm of sea shell collectors rivals that of stamp collectors. Shells, as natural and beautiful collector's items, are without peer. People have been collecting them, keeping them, polishing them, mounting them, using them and admiring them since the time of Aristotle. What makes a shell so very special, apart from its surface beauty, is the fact that it has served some creature as a home, or even several creatures: often the original occupant has been replaced by a series of temporary tenants requiring just exactly that size of house until they grow too big for it and move into another.

Some shells are as simple and utilitarian as a one-room apartment; some are many-chambered architectural wonders of immense complexity and elegance; some are so tiny as to be almost invisible; some are huge and too heavy for a man to lift without help. Shells of various types, colors, and sizes have been put to use in a multiplicity of ways ever since man began to use his ingenuity: as drinking horns and as receptacles for food, as source materials for jewelry and ornaments, as toys for children and decorations for the home.

Most shell collectors just happen. You have no interest whatsoever in shells and are quite content with your chess board and your bookshelves, until one day you walk barefoot in the sand and reach down, with curiosity, to pick up some small, seaweedy object. One shell leads to another, and all at once you find you have started a collection. Maybe you'll use it in an indoor rock garden or aquarium, or maybe you'll give all your shells to the neighbors' kids. And the next time you go the beach, you'll find yourself doing it all over again. There is something about a shell that just demands that you pick it up.




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Febuaury 7, 2012