Overseas: Properly English?

SHIP'S LOG: Thanks for all your music recs last post! A had a head-boppingly lovely time listening to them all. In this post, ancient jewellery and miniatures at the V&A.



One bright spring day in May I went down to South Kensington to see the Victoria & Albert Museum. I thought half a day would be enough to get a good grasp of Victorian taste but I was wrong. The building may not look like much from the outside, too much brick and gothic columns, but inside is a treasure trove of what I imagine awed visitors to Crystal Palace during the Great Exhibition.

I really REALLY loved the exhibition on the Aesthetic Movement, the Cult of Beauty, but they wouldn't let anyone take photographs! But look up Frederic Lord Leighton and the Pre-Raphaelites and rivals Whistler and Ruskin anyway . . . you won't regret it.






Had Victoria sponge and lemony tea at the most beautiful refectory in the world. High domed ceilings with Arts & Crafts details and stained glass windows flooded the hall with light, and I felt absolutely privileged to be there.









The photos above were taken in the Morris Room decorated by the artist and fantasist William Morris who not only made lovely tapestries and textiles based on work by his Pre-Raphaelite friends Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (awesome names right?) but wrote fairy tales with titles like The Well at the World's End and News from Nowhere. 

Portraits are my favourite thing to look at in museums because I love making up stories about who the people were and what they were like. It's also a great place to 'cast' novels like I did for Max Ravenscar from Georgette Heyer's Faro's Daughter when I saw Henry Brougham at the National Portrait Gallery. Geeky, I know, but infinitely fun.







Don't you think the eye miniature is haunting? Probably a memento mori, it was used as a lady's brooch and the tears are made of diamonds! I'm afraid I've bombed you with too many images BUT if you do like  'em I have more miniatures and micromosaics (you will definitely enjoy the tesserae) here.

So I'll leave you with a lovely snuffbox-clock automaton from the 17th century, the age of dashing trans-channel derring-do and red-bottomed heels for both sexes. It's made of gold, moss agate (a mineral though it looks like seaweed or coral), and glass. It reminds me quite a bit of my favourite Doctor Who episode, A Girl in the Fireplace in which Ten snogs Madame du Pompadour while clockwork monsters sneak around Versailles. Go watch!