3D Postcard - Scarborough Beach Finds
Description:
This is a 3d postcard design as an educational pieces and prototype accessibility art pieces for the blind and partially sighted. The postcard has a title and QR code in the top left, a topographical model of the coastline around Scarborough running left to right (north to south respectively).
Ten 3D models are set into the card these are all items that can be found along Scarborough’s coast. From left to right top to bottom these items are:
1 - Belemnite fossil (from the Jurassic period), a remnant from an ancient animal analogous to a cuttlebone for a cuttlefish.
2 - Small scallop shell (Argopecten sp.), the external case for a recently living bivalve.
3 - Fish Skull, a delicate bone remnant from a recently living fish.
4 - Ammonite fossil (from the Jurassic period), a fossil similar to a modern nautilus.
5 - Neolithic flint arrow head, a napped stone tool used for hunting by our early ancestors.
6 - Limpet Shell, a shell from a bivalve species found right along the UK’s coast.
7 - Cockle shell, a shell from a bivalve species commonly found and sometimes eaten along the British coast.
8 - Edible Whelk shell (not to scale), a large snail like bivalve commonly found in British waters.
9 - Cardina clam fossil (from the Jurassic period), a bivalve fossil commonly found along the Yorkshire coast.
10 - Squat Lobster carapace, the main part of the exoskeleton of a marine decapod.
How we made the postcard:
We often find our selves beach combing and collecting finds from the coast line between Whitby and Flamborough head. What better way of writing home about this beautiful stretch of coastline than with a postcard that includes some of these intriguing finds.
The items that we found were scanned in via a structured light scanner. The models edited to fit on a postcard sized plaque. We added a bit of topography data of the coastline for Scarborough as a back drop and the postcard was designed!
The small models of the various beach finds sit in groves set into the plaque secured via magnets.
Here at Chapel Prints its our business to make science, nature and history as accessible as possible. We hope this prototype pieces will engage people young and old to what they can find along the seastrand.
We’ve also include so braille and this web page in the hope this can help the piece be engaging and accessible to people who are partially sighted or blind. Nature and beach combing should be for everyone!
