Following a question from Jean-Félix Gandioli of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Nice about Cima Pollini (photo, right) and Pollini’s relationship with Clarence Bicknell, I researched the subject in MARVELS – The Life of Clarence Bicknell by Valerie Lester 2018 and brought forward all the references to Pollini there. You can download these excerpts (in […]
Cima Pollini – who was Pollini? Read More »
The family Bottacco and Clarence Bicknell – how did they know each other? Rhea Bottacca Sanseverino, her husband Leopoldo Bottacco and their daughter Rita Bottacco Edoardo Fumio of Florence contacted us on 6th April 2021 to ask for the original pictures from the “Clarence Bicknell’s Casa Fontanalba Visitors’ Book” which showed the entries in the
The family Bottacco and Clarence Bicknell Read More »
The Ancient King, l’Antico Re, was the name used by Clarence Bicknell and other botanists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for Saxifraga florulenta. Botanists and enthusiasts have always spent many patient hours in search of this rarity, and forever will. It is wonderful and exciting to find it in bloom. Read the
The Ancient King, Saxifraga florulenta Read More »
I received today a copy of an interesting photo of Clarence Bicknell. It was sent by Dr. Andrea De Pascale, PhD, Conservatore del Museo Archeologico del Finale, Istituto Internazionale di Studi Liguri (IISL), a sister museum of the Museo Bicknell. Andrea’s contact details are at the bottom of this page. The photo was acquired by
Photo of Clarence in 1883 in Finalmarina; what does it tell us? Read More »
70 years after Clarence Bicknell’s death he was being referred to as L’Homme des Merveilles, the man who discovered the 11,000 rock engravings in the Vallée des Merveilles in the mountains on the border of southeast France and Italy. You can go hiking there (https://provence-alpes-cotedazur.com/en/things-to-do/the-most-beautiful-routes/hiking-alpes-maritimes-vallee-des-merveilles/), stay in on the little hotels in Casterino where Clarence
L’Homme des Merveilles – Clarence Bicknell Read More »
Our assumption has been that the well-known photo of Bicknell and Pelloux together was taken in the high mountains, maybe in the Mercantour above the Vallée des Merveilles and Casterino. Not a bit of it; the gentlemen are taking an afternoon stroll and are low in the heat of the Italian Riviera, just a couple
Photo research: Alberto Pelloux and Clarence Bicknell Read More »
Luca Barale writes “I have also find out that Clarence sent a collection of Pliocene fossils collected in the Bordighera neighbourhood to Federico Sacco, geologist and palaeontologist based in Torino, who studied them and published them in the huge, 30-volumes work “I Molluschi dei Terreni Terziarii del Piemonte e della Liguria”. Sacco also dedicated a
Clarence’s collection of Pliocene fossils Read More »
Clarence Bicknell, archaeologist. An appreciation, by Christopher Chippindale. In 1909, the senior French prehistorian Cartailhac paid Bicknell a visit. He was greatly interested by his long day’s excursion into the Val Fontanalba. The rocks were much more wonderful than he had expected; and he said. “It is a great mystery.” His antiquarian colleagues had previously
The Vallée des Merveilles, also known in Italian as the Valle delle Meraviglie (Valley of Marvels), is a part of the Mercantour National Park in southern France. It means “the valley of marvels” but most English-speakers use the name in French. The mountainous area, including the valleys of Meraviglie and Fontanalba, together with the towns
Clarence did not regard himself as an archaeologist. When he first went up into the Mercantour region in 1881, he certainly knew about the rock engravings but his main motive was to extend his botanical studies from the Mediterranean plants round Bordighera to include alpine specimens. He was to use the same painstaking and meticulous
