This photograph of my kitchen cupboard was taken three years ago, which is really where Rag and Bone ...

author & photographer
Travelling Museum of Finds
Following the launch of Rag and Bone, I would have been at festival and bookshop events in 2020, sometimes accompanied by a ‘Travelling Museum of Finds’. Halfway between a print setter’s cabinet and a suitcase, this contains beachcombing and mudlarking finds collected while writing the book. Instead, as lockdowns meant I was unable to take it out, this blog offers a virtual version: a show-and-tell of those lost and discarded objects.
Rag and Bone: A History of What We’ve Thrown Away (John Murray, 2020)
‘Lyrical and intriguing’ LITERARY REVIEW
‘Poetic prose and brilliant stories… gloriously and richly strange: a portrait of what we were and what we might become’ PHILIP HOARE
This photograph of my kitchen cupboard was taken three years ago, which is really where Rag and Bone ...
In the past, goose barnacles attached to mainly driftwood. Now though, I find them on everything ...
The regularity of circles always draws my eye. So whether mudlarking or beachcombing, I often find ...
Against strandline seaweed, the green of plastic plants catches the eye. Perhaps most poignant are ...
In Europe, the toothbrush remained a luxury until the late 18th century. The most expensive had ...
Over the years I’ve found a lot of plastic army men on beaches. Most are left on the strandline at ...
‘Having crossed London on the Tube wearing wellies (which always gets a few glances), I walked into ...
The plastic figure below is one of the Bible's three wise men. I found it on the south coast of ...
‘We headed towards Warden Point – which is no longer a point – and the strange, unstable landscape ...
This hand is around 50 years old and washed up on a Cornish beach during the February storms. As the ...
Combs have been a favourite shore find of mine for years. I like that they’re ordinary, personal ...