Art as the non-verbal voice: A History Of Chocolate

It started with a Kit-Kat wrapper, or to be more precise a story about a Kit-Kat wrapper. I recall hearing the story at school, in the days where the teacher would gather all the students around them in a semi-circle on the floor. And the kids would sit cross-legged and listening raptly to whatever book they were reading that month.

In the story there was a boy, who had eaten a Kit-Kat he took the foil part of the wrapper and rolled the foil around until it became a ball. And every time he had a Kit-Kat the boy added to the ball again and again until it got bigger.

I don’t remember how the story ended or even what the point of it was, but what I do remember is that the next time I had a Kit-Kat I took the wrapper and rolled it around and around until it became a smooth sphere. And like the boy in the story I added to the wrapper each time I had a Kit-Kat. Happy at the slowly expanding silver sphere, that I had made and somehow managed to put in a place so safe it had survived my Mothers cleaning sprees.

Somehow and after many Kit-Kats, the slowly expanding ball became too big for the foil wrappers to fit around. They would no longer fit smoothly onto its surface, the uneven corners would stick out as the foil, which would no longer stick down, slid off. At first I remedied this by using two wrappers at once wrapping them around each other tightly. Before long that method too failed.

One day during the Easter holidays, just after finishing off an Easter egg the chocolate still in my mouth, the answer came. I don’t really remember deciding, I’d been sat for a while polishing off my Easter egg, (much too close to dinner time) as I looked out of the window into the back garden. And for some reason the flat windowsill seemed a perfect place to carefully flatten and smooth out the purple wrapper with silver writing on. I’d sat running a finger over the foil bit by bit until all the wrinkles were out and the curved torn edges were straight. Just to be sure I ran the foil across the windowsill, and pleased at its smooth feel and straight appearance held up it as though a trophy.

I’d been holding the precious silver sphere in my hand for a while; I liked the feel of it, liked turning it around in my hand absentmindedly playing with it, like some chocolate scented stress ball. It seemed an automatic movement I just did it, the purple foil wrapped around the ball again and again, just tight enough for it to be smoothed over. The once visible seams and cracks disappeared. And the ball now gave off a shiny purple reflection.

After that success every foil Easter egg wrapper was saved, the more different the Easter eggs to one another the better. I liked contrasting colours as the foil went around, red, silver, blue, green, and gold. I liked the different writing and even the pictures.

It’s safe to say my Easter egg stash didn’t last, and at a loss for wrappers the perfectly formed foil ball went to a new secret hiding place (because of how much bigger it had got). The ball would have to wait; I didn’t want to use the wrappers from my brother or sister’s eggs. It didn’t feel right. Besides that the wrappers were always creased or ripped so badly I couldn’t straighten them out right.

Waiting I thought even if it took a year was okay, I liked the idea that the object would be built up over time that it would slowly grow. But waiting it tuned out didn’t last too long. When July approached so did my birthday, and the mountain of chocolate wrapped in all those foil wrappers. The ball grew.

And it continued to grow at every opportunity Christmas, the occasional treat I had saved my pocket money up for, and any other chocolate gifting occasion.

About 19 years later and the ball is still here, still in a secret safe place, still being added to slowly although mainly at Easter. Although just like the Kit- Kat wrappers the Easter egg wrappers that had once seemed so ginormous are beginning to not fit.

The question is do I stop the 19 year long project now? Or do I continue it somehow, and let the different layers the ball is made up of show when they begin to visibly overlap?

The idea was to build it up slowly, almost naturally without force or pressure to just let it happen. But I like the idea that if you peeled back the many layers of this object. You would get a good view of the history of chocolate. Different brands, different chocolate sweets and some that probably don’t even exist anymore.

And for anyone thinking it, no I’m not going to get a big role of kitchen foil and layer it up that way.