& a spyglass, broken is a piece based on the lovely little spyglass Percy Shelley carried with him on his final voyage into the Gulf of La Spezia.  This treasured spyglass was among his possessions washed ashore in the days following his disappearance.  In an old ledger book, detailing the list of items found, was written the single line...& a spyglass, broken.  A whole world of perception is encompassed in this brief description.

In 1821 Shelley wrote  A Defense of Poetry in which he tells us that poetry  "compels us to feel that which we perceive." These words were written a year before he was drowned.  This necklace becomes a metaphor for the power of perception...through feeling.  Attached to a chain of linked ‘looking glass’ spheres is a small Victorian magnifying glass.  On the magnifying glass I have scratched the first few words from his famous quote...

All things exist as they are perceived...The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.