Sand

This sand is from the collection of the late Ivor Treby. He collected it in the enclosure of Wat Phra Singh at Chiang Mai.

This river sand probably has input from sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic terrain. The Chaing Mai lies on the Pingh River which is a likely source. The sand was perhaps brought in as a surface dressing.

The sand contains sparse fragments of white, thinly tabular but non-calcareous (possibly silicified) shell. The quartz grains are transparent to translucent and colourless, angular to rounded. Some are ironed stained and orange to brownish-red in colour. Quartz grains are up to 2mm in size. Muscovite is sparse and biotite flakes are rare flakes and up to 1 mm. There are some dark brown to black magnetic grains. The chert is greyish to brown sub-angular, slightly polished. The marble is off white weakly calcareous,?dolomitic; kaolinised, white, black speckled, fine-grained granitic fragments.

Ivor was a biochemistry teacher and poet with over 400 published poems. He considered himself to be a gay literary activist.

Ivor took early retirement in the 1980s and dedicated his time to researching two Victorian/Edwardian women poets who wrote under the pseudonym Michael Field. He also spent much of the next 20 years travelling abroad. Wherever he went he collected samples of sand and sediment.

He was meticulously organised. His personal archive of poems, postcards, letters and research is held by the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. For more information on Ivor and the archive please see their website http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/modern/treby/treby.html