Friday, Friday…

It’s really quite rare for jaded old me to come across something that moves my hardened old heart, but they opened a new exhibition in Gallery 100 with beautiful textiles and I am in bloody damn love. I was moving in a rapture from piece to piece, my eyes glazing over with passion, lust, glee, and everything in between… and then I saw something that took the breath out of my lungs, the proverbial wind from my sails, knocked me for a loop.

As simple as it might seem, this bedcover had me sitting down on the bench in the middle of the gallery and crying from the sheer beauty of it. The simplicity, the elegance, and yet the complexity and incredible amount of work that went into making the fabric make it a rare treat to have survived as long as it has intact. It’s an amazing feat.

Inaugural post!

This beautiful grille is just outside the gift shop and the cafe on the first floor of the museum, just chillin’. It gets natural light from an overhead window and really has pride of place where it is. The design itself is very simple, skewing toward Bauhaus-inspired modernism before there was such a thing, and well-worn, as you can clearly see from the bits that have come off over the years.

The designs of the 1890’s were often about form over function, but in this case, they were pretty evenly matched. The artistic balances well with the functionality and practicality in a way that is attractive and informal rather than stilted and classist.