A thing of shreds and patches
Oct. 10th, 2010 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustIt's not just in stories, apparently, that foundlings abandoned at birth are identified, years later, by a token or a piece of cloth left with them by their mother. Yesterday's Guardian carries a charming article by Kathryn Hughes, previewing an exhibition that's about to open at London's Foundling Museum.
The Foundling Hospital, it seems, required absolute anonymity for the children in its care; yet it knew that sometimes family fortunes improved, and mothers might be able to resume looking after their own children. So a notice at the door of the hospital encouraged mothers to leave some identifiable token, such as a scrap of fabric, by which the child might be identified. Only a minority of mothers did so, but that minority added up to 5000 tokens carefully archived against the mother's eventual return.
What I find irresistible about this, I think, is the intersection of the subjective, each little sample of fabric the surviving evidence of a personal history, and the historical overview, the sum total of the collection being, according to curator John Styles, "the largest collection in Britain of everyday textiles from the eighteenth century."
The Museum's web site has some more pictures.
The Foundling Hospital, it seems, required absolute anonymity for the children in its care; yet it knew that sometimes family fortunes improved, and mothers might be able to resume looking after their own children. So a notice at the door of the hospital encouraged mothers to leave some identifiable token, such as a scrap of fabric, by which the child might be identified. Only a minority of mothers did so, but that minority added up to 5000 tokens carefully archived against the mother's eventual return.
What I find irresistible about this, I think, is the intersection of the subjective, each little sample of fabric the surviving evidence of a personal history, and the historical overview, the sum total of the collection being, according to curator John Styles, "the largest collection in Britain of everyday textiles from the eighteenth century."
The Museum's web site has some more pictures.
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Date: 2010-10-10 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-10 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-10 08:32 pm (UTC)Okay; that's amazing. Thank you for linking.
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Date: 2010-10-10 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-10 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 09:11 am (UTC)- I'm distracted by the thought that yours is the nostalgia of the well-travelled: wherever you are, you're homesick for somewhere else! (Shouldn't laugh, because it's hard; but it's a very high class of hardship!)
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Date: 2010-10-11 12:22 pm (UTC)I suppose it's also the nostalgia of the child of Divorce. I moved around a lot as a child, first as an intact family with my dad (who was in the army) and then later without my dad. After the divorce my mum had to find work and so we moved quite a bit more whilst I was a teenager. I was so happy to start university and not have to relocate anywhere for 4 years unless I chose to.
Turns out I chose to. I went to Belgium in my third year and saw a world outside of the US for the first time in my life at age 20. I guess the vagrant life was ingrained early. ;-)
I think that I am particularly wistful about missing this foundling exhibition because of the fabric/history aspect, not so much because I miss London. I'll be posting more about it soon, but when J and I were making ready to leave the UK, I was 'done' and ready to come back to the US and 'normal' life for a while.
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Date: 2010-10-11 04:57 am (UTC)Nine
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Date: 2010-10-11 09:11 am (UTC)