Plumblines

Participant’s ingredients for her plumbline

I liked playing with the idea of making sensory plumblines which contradicts the measurement of a straight line and a non-linear quality to the sensory weight made from texture and scent.

Radio 4 The Purfumed Mountaineer programme this week interviewed head purfumer Shelagh Foyle:

“Scent is just so attuned to memories and it’s so evocative it’s like none of the other senses. A smell will bring you back to a place in time and this for me is taking me back to my times in the laboratories in Yardley….one of the most difficult things is that there is no words to describe perfumes. You cannot describe a perfume in its essence..in its entirety. There is literally no language to do it.”

My interest in the plumbline sparked the attic hunt of another local. And he found the plumbline his father used as an engineer. His wife had cleaned it in brown sauce to get rid of the rust. This inspired a conversation about smells and using different food types for cleaning…even banana skins!

In my research I came across a beautiful object from the Libraries & Museums Headquarters. I remembered years back someone telling me there was handling boxes made up from local histories. I was not disappointed when I seen the boxes and still amazed that they loan these out to community groups. I have been living beside the Clyde for over 6 years and since arriving in Glasgow in 1998 have been interested in ship building. So I was naturally drawn to the ship building handling box at the headquarters and fell in love with the plumbline in the metal case.

This was used to get straight lines and you can make a plumbline by adding any weight to a piece of string. This gave me an idea of everyone making their own plumbline using smells and textures.