The native earth of the estuary is mid toned brown in colour, a sort of Beaulieu buff which I washed and spun, then dried in the summer sun, as part of an ongoing collection of refined sediment. It is nothing out of the ordinary, a commonplace and everyday expression of the local colour of its place.

It is a collection of clays, marls and sand laid down around 33 million years ago in the late Eocene period, which was named for the dawn (eos) of a new (kainos) climate bringing different fauna and flora.  Plus ça change….

Patches of iron oxide from chalybeate springs stain the generally browner mud at regular intervals along the littoral. John Ruskin, referring to another chalybeate spring in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, felt that the purest form of iron was its oxide, and that nature would eventually return even the polished steel of the finest engineering achievements of his time, back to dusty rust*. Through a process of washing and refining, I have captured a few grams of the lightest and finest reddish particles as a token of mortality, of change and a remembrance of the work of a Victorian writer.

*A Lecture Delivered at Tunbridge Wells, February, 1858: http://www.readbookonline.net/read/2781/12001/

Transparent red expressed from layers of decomposing oak leaves floats above heavier ocherous sediments in a warm pool at the river’s edge (@ 50 47.260 N x 1 24.248 W). I gather this fluid reminder of the tree in a small jar and deliver it for further contemplation in the Egg.