SUZIE LAWRENCE

Folkestone, United Kingdom

“My great grandmother Minnie died aged 100 in 2008. She was kind and careful, a long-time vegetarian, swimmer, gardener and modernist (loved to sit listening to her iPod in the sun in her last years). There was one item of hers left to my sister and I. A smooth, unembellished jade box of about the same capacity as a matchbox, filled to the brim with tiny shells Minnie had collected as a young woman in Jersey.

The many whorled, shimmering, minutely-detailed seashells that remain are my reminder of Minnie that truly belong - as we all do - to the natural world. Marred and carved beautifully, distinctly and uniquely by their years on Earth, solid but delicate, with similarities but irreplaceable. They existed way before they were picked by Minnie from those beaches and cherished for the rest of her days. And if I continue striving to be anything close to as careful, gentle and peaceful a person as my great-grandmother was - they will outlive me too. As will my own little collection, from the beaches I now live by... “