A Pebble for Your Thoughts
What is about these little bits of rock worn smooth by wind or ice or water that so entrances us? Is it the myriads of colours and patterns? The satisfying crunch they provide as we stride across the beach? Or that they bring back happy memories of childhood holidays - the seemingly endless days on the beach or by the river?
If you love pebbles you are in good company: pebbles have inspired great art and music, scientists look to them to discover secrets of deep time and they are woven into our folklore and psyche.
“Honoured be thou, thou small pebble lying in the lane; and when any one looks at thee, may he think of the beautiful world he lives in, and all of which it is capable.”
Leigh Hunt’s London Journal
The Artistic Pebble
Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, originally the home of art collector Jim Ede and his wife Helen, is known as the “Louvre of the Pebble”.
Artist Ian Hamilton Finlay carved this description of the place on a large flat stone scupture. It reads "KETTLE’S YARD CAMBRIDGE ENGLAND IS THE LOUVRE OF THE PEBBLE" Originally created for an exhibition here in 1995, it is today one of the first objects vistors encounter.
Pull the rope, hear the bell tinkle, step inside and the reason why is obvious. Among works by Brancusi, Lowry and Alfred Wallis are pebbles – lots of them. Some are in baskets, others complemented with fresh flowers or arranged next to a sculpture.
To Jim, pebbles were as important as everything else. By mixing natural forms like pebbles with artworks, Jim was challenging and changing the traditional ideas of what art is and could be.
Perhaps most famous of all Jim's pebbles, is a beautifully arranged spiral on a table.
‘I will discard 10,000 in my search for one whose outward shape exactly balances my idea of what a pebble is... We find a perfect pebble once in a generation and once in a continent perhaps.’ Jim Ede
In the 1920s and 30s, Jim was a curator at The Tate where he met Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, and many of the most exciting of the avant garde British artists.
“Now, those very artists were also extremely interested in pebbles! And, interested in the sense that pebbles were found sculptures – these were naturally beautiful objects. And in a way, the challenge for the sculptor, for Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, was to make something that was somehow worthy of the pebble, something that could even be seen as matching the quality of the found pebble. Pebbles for that generation of artists, after the First World War, were in some senses an inspiration for the simplicity of their modernist forms.” Andrew Nairne, Director of Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge
“Many people select a stone or a pebble to carry for the day. The weight and form and texture felt in our hands relates us to the past and gives us a sense of a universal force. The beautifully shaped stone washed up by the sea is a symbol of continuity, a silent image of our desire for survival, peace and security.”
Barbara Hepworth
Barbara Hepworth © Bowness
The Scientific Pebble
In 1836 Gideon Mantell – a man better known for his scientific study of dinosaurs - published a book entitled “Thoughts on a Pebble, or A First Lesson in Geology”.
Dedicated to his son Reginald, it took as its subject a flint pebble from a hill-side stream and used science like a “fabled wand of a magician… to reveal the secrets they have so long enshrined”
Mantell told the story of his pebble from its formation, across time, and peered inside at the fossils within.
His aim was to “ explain in a simple and attractive guise some of the grand truths relating to the ancient physical history of our planet.”
Each pebble on the beach, in a river or on land comes with its own story
A pebble is moment, a stopping point, on a mammoth journey from rock to grain of sand.
Some have been shaped by wind, some by ice, some by water. Some have been passengers on glaciers.
They continue to fascinate geologists today.
“All the pebbles and all the rocks are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that tells us – well, they’re the only archive of historical events on earth. Those pebbles were here 2.6 billion years ago. And they’re still here now. And we can look at those and we can get a window on to a past earth.” Dr Neil Davies – Sedimentary Geologist, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
According to the Krumbein phi scale of sedimentology which classes rocks according to size: A pebble is 4–64mm, a cobble 64–256mm and a boulder greater than 256mm.
The Magical Pebble
“To hinder the night mare, they hang in a string, a flint with a hole in it (naturally) by the manger.... It is to prevent the nightmare, viz. the hag, from riding their horses, who will sometimes sweat all night. The flint thus hung does hinder it."
"Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects", John Aubrey, 1696
Adder stone, hag stone, witch stone, ring stone, holey stone, snake stone, thunder stone, dobbie stone.
All sorts of names are given to pebbles with holes through them and folklore has it they can ward off evil. They were used to protect households against witches and pixies, to save animals and humans from nightmares, and to cure a range of disease
Dorset fisherman threaded beach stones to their boat’s pulling ropes to prevent them from being "witched".
“...there’s something about it as a connector to other worlds – the folklore is, if you look through the hole in the stones you're supposed to be able to see other kingdoms.” Alex Woodcock, Stone Carver and Writer.
The Useful Pebble
"Pebbles" by E J Dunn. Published 1911
Chapter VII. Uses of Pebbles to Man
As Tools - Weapons – Mealing Stones – Sinkers – Weights – Sacred Objects – Ornaments – In Graves – Juggling – Building – Paving – In Filters– Geologically.
“From the earliest periods men of all races have availed themselves of pebbles, and have used them in endless ways, and it may be that pebbles have had more to do with the beginning of civilisation than is generally supposed.”
The Emotional Pebble
Perhaps the reason so many of us love pebbles is their timelessness, the way they feel in the hand, and the mesmerising sounds when the waves surge or gently roll over a shingle beach. It certainly inspired Benjamin Britten.
So sit back and enjoy some sounds of the waves on shingle and the words of others who love pebbles.
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“I think there is some comfort in geology – it outlasts us. Our lifespans, compared to the lifespan of this holed stone, are vastly different. This has lasted, or been created, millions and millions of years ago, and is still kicking around on the beach” Alex Woodcock, Stone Carver and Writer
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"...that rhythm that goes on, when you’re just lying on the beach after a swim, and you’re just hearing that – it’s very therapeutic... one never tires of it, it’s endless, and it’s quite, it can be emotional" Margaret Howell, Clothes Designer
"you pick up a pebble, you sort of naturally feel 'grounded' – and it brings you back to reality in a way" Sandra Freshney, Archivist, The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
Listen! You hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Extract from Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
"The Pebble in Your Pocket' is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 12th May 2020 at 11am and repeated on Monday 18th May at 9pm.
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