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Green Pebble Magazine
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Articles> Tolly Nason
When
Charles Darwin returned to the UK from the Galápagos and Cocos Islands
in 1836, he had amongst his collection 14 different types of finch; each
roughly equal in size at 10 to 20cm, and yet each with a different-sized
and shaped beak.
These Geospizinae, known more affectionately as Darwin’s
Finches, would eventually contribute to Darwin’s groundbreaking theory
of evolution by natural selection. Variations in beak size and shape, Darwin
discovered, made the birds highly adapted to the different food sources
available to them. The more adapted they were, the more likely they were
to thrive.
For Cambridge glass artist Tolly Nason, too, bird beaks are wondrous things.
A regular visitor to natural history museums, she seeks out shapes and themes
to incorporate into her art and she often finds herself drawn to creatures
of scientific interest. In 2007 she produced a set of life-size glass dodo
beaks; in 2008 she created a limited edition set of Great Auk beaks; again,
created life size and perfectly to scale.
Most recently, she produced a set of 14 red finch beaks at twenty times
their life size, for a display honouring Charles Darwin at Cambridge’s
University Museum of Zoology.
‘I had wanted to display at the Museum of Zoology for a long time
because I’d gone there so often for inspiration,’ she says.
‘Then, when the Darwin Festival was around the corner, I focused my
mind on the Galapagos finch beaks.’
It was, she says, the natural thing for her to do given that she had already
created a series of dodo beaks, but receiving the final confirmation from
the museum took longer than she had anticipated. ‘In the end, I had
only four months in which to do all 14 beaks.’...
This is only a small part of the article.
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Tolly
Nason’s work can be viewed at Sea
Picture Gallery in Clare, Suffolk; The
Angela Mellor Gallery in Ely, Cambridgeshire; Primavera
in Cambridge; and in The
Bower House Gallery.
Her pate de verre pieces retail from £40; commissions of the finch
beaks range from £3,500 to £24,000.
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