The Beads of Gresham Street

Speculative heirlooms of place

Join us for the next walk on Sunday 13th August, get your tickets here.

The Beads of Gresham Street is a collection of beads made from found glass, inspired by fragments of Roman London beads also reworked and reimagined from found glass. The beads are experienced through a guided walk in central London that speculates, what if beads kept occurring in this place, just as the waves sort pebbles into tidelines? What if time gathers and accumulates beads to this space? Throughout the walk beads are brought out and revealed, each new one sparking a narrative of that space and adding a chapter to the story, another bead on the bracelet. Passed between participants along the walk, the bracelet is collaboratively made, each selection of beads unique to that group just as the walkers’ experiences are. This blend of material and place creates a fascinating kind of encounter; a meeting with the temporality of the glass creates a sense of awe and connection through history, both rooted in the space through the embodiment of walking yet relocated from our surface assumptions and experience of place, a kind of material time travel.