Alum Bay Sands
A traditional product of Alum Bay, and a fixture of Isle of Wight tourist shops, is the creation of ornaments using the coloured sands layered in vials and jars. The sands also were used for pictures, a popular craft in Victorian times known as marmotinto. Visitors are no longer allowed to dig out their own sands, and signs on the beach warn tourists not to climb the cliffs because of the danger of landslides. The Needles Park, however, has a facility for visitors to fill their own sand souvenirs with sand collected and preserved from natural cliff falls throughout the year. In the past it was possible to buy Alum Bay coloured sand by mail order and make ones own sand pictures and bottles at home.
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Famous quotes containing the words bay and/or sands:
“The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty—
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes”
—Hart Crane (1899–1932)
“The sands are frantic
In the hourglass. But there is time
To change, to utterly destroy
That too-familiar image
Lurking in the glass”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)