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Apothecary
The word apothecary derives from the Ancient Greek, meaning ‘repository or storehouse’.
These white plaster cast bottles of various shapes and sizes, with tops which look as if they should open, or with droppers to squeeze. But the bottles don’t open, and instead of tinctures, each object contains a story.
Melissa offered a two-fold challenge to academics: first to paint something on the cast plaster bottle that related both to the object itself and to the academic’s area of research. The second challenge is to try to guess the meanings or ‘contents’ of the other painted bottles.
Rather than a collection of medicines compiled according to recipes and accurate measurements, these bottles represent a repository of different kinds of knowledge.Melissa also ran the activities with academics via apothecary cast plaster bottles. The challenge was two-fold: first to paint something on the cast plaster bottle that related both to the object itself and to the academic’s area of research. The second challenge was to try to guess the meanings or ‘contents’ of the other painted bottles. Rather than a collection of medicines compiled according to crafted recipes and accurate measurements, these bottles represent a repository of different kinds of knowledge and experience.