At CIRCLE we champion aesthetically engaging art and craft for the contemporary environment. This year we are giving a bi-monthly Zine slot to individual works which reference the history of art, culture and society.

Here we see a simple and poetic shallow bowl, at its centre lies a Scallop shell. 

The understanding of the word scallop nowadays is synonymous with its meat - cheffy seafood, but the ribbed shell has been steeped in symbolism and iconic branding since the time of ancient Greece.In fact the earliest record of scallops is from the Triassic period, over 200 million years ago.  

The scallop shell is symbol of light associated with the Goddess Aphrodite - Venus to the Romans. In the Roman era, the scallop was a symbol of the sea, fertility and pilgrimage. The sea goddess Venus was carried to shore on a scallop shell and it was this mythological image that inspired Sandro Botticelli to Paint the most famous scallop shell in the history of art - The Birth Of Venus. 

The Birth of Venus was painted in the mid 1480s. It depicts the goddess Venus arriving at the shore after her birth, when she had emerged from the sea fully-grown. The painting, commissioned by the Medici family is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.