Manger in a Shell

Placing the Nativity scene within a scallop shell or other natural-form enclosure has been a popular devotional miniature since the Middle Ages. The shell carries its own iconography — the symbol of pilgrimage (the badge of Saint James of Compostela), of baptism, and of the unfolding wonder of creation itself. To frame the manger in a shell is to suggest that the birth of Christ is the centre of the natural world as well as the spiritual one.