Last September we had a warm, hazy day with long sun rays heavy with gold...This dreary February, I plunged into its sticky charm like an insect immortalized in the amber capsule of time.
Perhaps not quite so well preserved as to wear a back to school outfit you might add, but if you won't indulge me, I am. This is an alpaca knit (Artesano, I think) that I meant to show you ages ago and didn't, so here it is in an effort to catch up with things. Loosely based on the mid illustration above, it's a project that stemmed from my endless soft spot for vintage junior fashions, although I daresay this particular style was equally popular among ladies in the 20's.
Talking about time and space enclaves, Snowshill Manor, where these pics were taken, accommodates in beautifully mellow grounds hidden amongst rolling hills, an absolute oddity of a collection, or rather a collection of collections, made up of fascinating objects from all over the world, forced together by the will of one eccentric man in a still, lifeless, strangely vacuous mausoleum.
I loved the place but it is a house nobody ever lived in, purposely built to contain, and contain it does. And amazing as the content is, the objects feel uprooted, robbed of their personal context and in a sense, of meaning. It sounds a little contrary, after all it is a museum, but after the initial amazement I felt strangely saddened, as if all this beauty piled up was in vain, and vain, making no history/saying no story about its author other than one of compulsory habit.
What makes us so hungry to collect? What is this inner need to posses the soul of things, perhaps the soul put into creating them? Uninhabited by us, the most exquisite objects become frail carcasses, empty vessels going nowhere. The last of summer's days, and here I was, all dressed up as a child, questioning my own hoarding impulses, my own futile interests, someone who had come to see all this cool stuff and found a memento mori instead.
