Seaweed: Foraging, Collecting, Pressing

coastal living

dorset life

melanie molesworth

There is a photograph of ten-year-old me on a chilly Dorset beach, taken by my mother. I’m wearing an ill-advised swimsuit and holding a huge piece of Oar Weed, a common Kelp, which I remember taking home in order to test the old theory of predicting the weather with seaweed. Other than this, seaweed didn’t play much of a part in my childhood – I was more interested in collecting butterflies and catching lizards and slow worms.

My childhood was a nomadic one. Like Julia, I was a Forces child, which meant moving to a new air base with my RAF father every two or three years. It was usually somewhere rather dull in the UK, far from the sea, although there were more exotic stays in Germany and Ohio in the USA (so far from the sea!). Family holidays usually involved trips to Devon with our caravan and a tent that I shared with my older sister. The days were filled with sea swimming and ice cream and evening sessions of Monopoly behind our condensation-fogged caravan windows.

Twelve years ago, I was leading a very different life. Along with my husband Martin, and our two sons, I lived in a comfortable Edwardian semi-detached house in a lovely part of West London, where we were never far from a coffee shop or a bus into the centre of town. I was an interiors stylist, racing around propping and designing sets for magazines and lifestyle companies, which I loved, but was finding increasingly stressful. The boys were almost adults and becoming more independent, and we found ourselves looking at properties near the sea.

Finding a weird and wonderful house, in need of complete renovation, two hundred yards from the beach in Lyme Regis, West Dorset, made our minds up for us. We didn’t know anyone in the area – in fact neither of us had ever been to Lyme – so it was quite a gamble. There were a few sleepless nights wondering if we were making a terrible mistake, yet it turns out that opting for the coastal life has been one of our best decisions. Living in Lyme gives me the best of both worlds – cliff walks and sea dips on my doorstep alongside the energy of a bustling holiday town. I love the ebb and flow of the seasonal visitors, but revel in the quieter months when the town empties out, foraging for seaweeds on the shoreline with just the seagulls for company.

Julia and I have been friends since our twenties. I can’t remember when we first met but it feels like I’ve always known her. We both worked in magazines and were great allies, who could rely on each other to share our latest favourite propping sources and photographic locations. After discovering a wonderful Victorian portfolio of pressed seaweeds on one of my propping expeditions in London’s Kensington Church Street, I used some to create a large framed collage that sat in my London kitchen. When Julia moved to Cornwall, I gave her some as a housewarming gift and I like to think they inspired her to start her seaweed pressing. It seemed like fate when I discovered that nearly all the vintage seaweeds in the collection were collected within ten miles of where I now live in Lyme Regis.

Establishing Molesworth & Bird, after many years of working and socializing together, seemed a natural step to take. We were both pressing seaweeds, which had led to great interest amongst our friends, so we thought we might try and create a business doing what we loved. New friends in Lyme Regis gave us wonderful support. Alice Meller and Michelle Blyth stocked our first greetings cards at their stylish independent shop, Ryder & Hope. Bella and Nick Ivins approached us to create a ‘Seaweed Salon’ at one of their beautifully curated ‘open house’ studios. We were given a room in their Georgian home overlooking Lyme Bay to display our framed seaweed pressings and were overwhelmed by the response.

I feel incredibly lucky to work with someone I know so well and trust implicitly. It’s a great comfort being able to share both the challenges and the heart-lifting joys of running a business. It helps, of course, that Julia has an enviable sense of style, so I know she will keep our standards high.

We don’t have particular roles. Does it sound rather unprofessional to say this? We both bring our styling skills of course. Julia’s experience of creating her inspirational children’s shop in Fowey has been invaluable. I look after our Instagram feed, and am also the main shopkeeper. I love running our little shop based in The Town Mill in Lyme Regis. Julia frames our original pressings and inscribes them all – partly because of her knowledge but also because her handwriting is so much better. My talented husband Martin is a huge support to the business and quietly helps with the smooth running of all things, including the rubbish jobs we try to ignore!

I don’t think I will ever tire of collecting and pressing seaweeds. It has become quite an obsession. I often have to remind myself to look up and out to sea and enjoy the view while I am scouring the sand and rocks for more and different varieties! I love the whole process; from the gathering and looking through my bucket at the end of the day, to fiddling around making beautiful shapes at my kitchen table and then of course opening the press to discover both the successes and failures.

We both forage from different beaches of course. I can be on one of the Lyme Regis beaches in minutes, whilst Julia often faces a more challenging, precarious climb to reach her secret Cornish coves. We do enjoy our days foraging together – when we can explore each other’s seaweed haunts. I seem to find more of the intricate and delicate Red Comb seaweeds on my local beach, but I’m always rather envious of