Marion Taylor

Copper, Graphite, Salt and Time
copper plates with dry point etching,
worked with salt and graphite

In 1898 the Industrial Class was formed in Newlyn to teach the fishermen to work with copper when the weather or injury prevented them going to sea. The Arts and Crafts Newlyn Copper became very much a part of the Newlyn School collection.

Taking this successful collaboration of artists and fishermen as inspiration, Taylor condensed the impressions gleaned from her research down to three basic elements: copper itself; salt, and graphite. The salt refers to the sea, and the cart loads that preserved the pilchards, spread like snow over the fish lain out on the cobbles all around the harbour. The graphite references the artists’ trade, who too would have been much in evidence on a stroll around Newlyn, as they worked ‘en plein air’ using the fishermen and their families as the subject of their paintings.

The pieces produced using these three elements create a time- based work as the intensely re-active nature of the copper ensures continual change and development in the surface appearance of the plates.