COLOURED SAND PICTURES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20620, 19 July 1930, Page 6 (Supplement)

COLOURED SAND PICTURES.

Mention has been made recently of a curious and forgotten art that flourished in the early part of the last century. In the reign of George HI. and up to the first half of the reign of Queen Victoria there lived in England many representatives of families of Hanoverian origin. -Although they still bore German names, they had become completely angli cised.

Some of fheso worked as table-deckers during tho days of George 111., and they made pictures from the coloured sands, that aro to bo found at Alum Hay, near tho Needles. Then they conceived the idea that these pictures might be made permanent by being fastened with gum to a cardboard or wooden background and then attached lo ceilings. According to a book published in 1789. such a picture was actually made and fixed to.tho ceiling of tho drawing room i'i tho Queen's Lodge, Windsor. Unfortunately, this specimen of the art of sand pictures has not survived, as tho Queen's Lodge was pulled down in 1823. Since the early part of tho nineteenth cent,wry this peculiar art seems to have entirely died out, and there aro now butfew specimens of the pictures which were worked in sand one hundred years ago.