Natural History vs. Victoria & Albert

Breakfast today was delicious. Last night, in our wanderings, we spotted a small cafe on the block just past the Earls Court Tube station that advertised cheap breakfast plates. So today we tried their full English breakfast, just to say we did the whole grilled tomato and stacks of toast thing. Technically, we also each had one banger, even though we haven't managed to find bangers and mash yet. The breakfast included 2 eggs, country ham sort of things, mushrooms, and a ball of hash browns (?!) The plain black coffee I ordered turned out to be French pressed and thick as the infamous London fog that we've yet to see.

Our goal was the Victoria and Albert Museum today, but we got a little side-tracked at the Natural History Museum next door. The building alone in spectacular and has curious animals perched on its walls in place of gargoyles. We popped in just to see it and ended up perusing the geological and gemological sections. There was a neat metal globe which circled the main escalator to the upper floors in this wing. So, we also journeyed through the Earth today. We won a free hot drink with a scratch-off card too. Hopefully there will be a chance to go back and redeem it!

From the Natural History Museum, we crossed to the V&A for a short talk about the relationship between fashion and armor and a presentation by Juliana Sissons, an artist who was inspired by the collections in the V&A. Sissons presented slides of her knit-wear designs and thinking process after an introductory talk. (on display in the Medieval and Renaissance gallery) A scholar associated with the museum explained "fashion was a young, rich man's game" and the clothing and armor were subject to the same whims of taste. He presented examples of period clothing from the 15th-17th centuries and armor from the same periods. The styles were practically mirror images of one another. Most obvious were the changing waistlines, decorative patterning, leg-guard shapes, and shoulder & breastplate forms. One suit of armor even had the same long, pointy-toed shoes (like elf shoes, stretched out) as its cloth contemporaries. They would've been entirely useless as armor; the man could never walk in them and never intended to. (His groomsman would connect the foot-guards to the man's greaves once the man was settled on his horse.)


After the talk, we made our way to the Medieval and Renaissance gallery suite. Sissons' knitwear was displayed alongside gilded armor in a long hallway full of wrought iron gates, fences, hangings, posts, and chests. I suspect, with photos from here and various fences around London, that these designs will be influencing my work-to-be. Thinking about armor in a different light was also fun after all the armor we have been seeing in places like the Tower.

Other exhibits in the V&A didn't really hold everyone's interest today, so after this we popped back into the Natural History Museum. I will explore the V&A more on Friday, between lectures. I suspect that, after all the objects we have seen in situ and in action at the various palaces and churches, seeing objects behind glass is not nearly as interesting as it might have been for anyone not terribly invested in objects in the first place. Afterwe closed down the Natural History Museum (which closes at the very odd hour of 5:50pm), we spotted an art show associated with the London Design Festival which sounded interesting.

One of the rooms was described as a place where 8 different designers made "wonder cabinets" with things from their studios. I was excited, because I was curious to see what others might do with the subject of wonder cabinets. The displayed turned out to be eight raw plywood boxes with absolutely nothing to do with wonderkammern. Instead, all that enticing language was a cover for "this is a diorama about my studio practice." Lame. There was one guy on the top floor who had created an interesting and funny app which prevented the whole excursion from being a bust. Individuals could enter headlines into the app and the app would in turn generate new headlines from pieces of old ones so that they sounded exactly like any real headline but made absurd claims such as one about President Obama spilling some juicy gossip about a famous pop star. The artist was at work setting up and printing new playbill-sized sheets as we watched.

I thought this was interesting and potentially pertinent to wonder cabinets, early science/categorization, etc: 

My thoughts ran something like: this seems similar to how, given a starfish and a cactus, both with spines, a renaissance-era collector/alchemist/scientist/naturalist might have drawn a parallel between what we now know of as two very very different things because of this similarity.  I see a "natural pattern" between this big copper blob, the dendritic pattern in the smaller stone, and the outline of the river system (aerial view). Dunno, what to do with this info, but thought recording the thought is always good.

That concluded our adventures for today-- I think we are all tired and needed this slower pace before we dive headfirst into Hampton Court tomorrow. I was originally going to go to Oxford instead, but I'm pretty sure I can get my fill of the Pitt Rivers Museum and see the Ashmolean in one day instead of two. It'd really be silly to get all the way over here and miss out on Hampton Court!