Blog Post
Karen's Final Blog
- By Karen Hayes
- •
- 02 Dec, 2016
- •
Suddenly, as the hall is divested of its collections I am reminded of the strange emptiness left in a room when the Christmas tree, with all its finery, is removed. The light and colour reflected from the curiosities and exotica of our museum, which has been so captivating over the last few weeks, has been packed away into boxes, the way that fancy costumes are folded into laundry hampers at the end of the pantomime season. In a way it is sad to say goodbye to the museum and we already miss the spill of lights on shiny objects and the bubbling laughter in the crowded rooms, and the way that you always knew there were still people here by the striking of handbells in the hall. In another way the house, cleared of its strange cargo, re-emerges just as beautiful and calm as ever, reverts to its comfortable, uncluttered spaciousness and the new silence becomes an in-breath before the next idea.
We have been on quite a journey during this project and have met fellow travellers along the way who have been inspiring companions, have made us laugh with their self-deprecating humour and gently made fun of us at the same time, (We needed it!). Some of the collections have literally taken our breath away and all of them have been captivating, beautiful and meticulously put together by their owners. During the last weekend the house has had about 250 people through the doors and by the end of each three hours opening the faces of the lovely students on the door must have hurt from smiling so much. Their effort in curating a door collection has been remarkable and we are beginning to see just how much of a snapshot of the footfall through the exhibition this will leave. We have been given everything from personal letters, (including the birth and death certificates of one lady’s elder brother who died aged three before she was born), to Amy’s pencil troll and from a remarkable Victorian boot button hook to the conker that a child had found the previous afternoon. I can’t wait to see this little collection on display. It will be a real legacy piece.
Blodwyn, (no longer trending on twitter but still the star of the show), stretched out full length on the rug in the white room when we relaid it as if, as she had always suspected, this whole event was just a moment of madness on the part of her humans, and that she felt vindicated, now that order had finally been restored. We have untied the St Leonard’s bell ropes from where they had been suspended down the stairwell from Chris’s old garden rakes and they are now sitting in a furry coil next to the cases of bells waiting to be delivered back to the tower. The figurines have gone back to Bhim and Yogesh, their porcelain faces swathed in bubble wrap to stop their noses chipping and we have taken down the notices and postcards and the Jaques family tree leaving a trail of little black sticky squares on the paintwork as if the house had recovered from a particularly gruesome strain of pox.
As we swept up all the polystyrene balls and wrapped up all the ladybird mugs we immediately started to ask ourselves what next ? So many people have asked us, this weekend, where this exhibition will go next, when can they come back and see it and what will we do next at the hall. The honest answer is that we don’t know. This was always intended to be a short project; a pop-up opportunity to celebrate a particular place and time. Hearing the buzz of excitement this has created we have begun to think of how we can replicate the experience, not with another exhibition necessarily, but with some other project which reflects ordinary lives and celebrates our shared human experience. After each museum day we have sat down and shared a bottle of fizzy wine or two and shouted gleefully about all the things we’re interested in creating next. Prosecco hour has become
a sort of ideas exchange, with added objects for tripping over. I can already hear a cork popping in the other room……. time to start thinking of a new project.
Thank you to everyone who came to visit, who came back with relatives and friends, who lent us their collections, filled in the visitors book and contributed to the door collection. We could not have done it without you.
We have been on quite a journey during this project and have met fellow travellers along the way who have been inspiring companions, have made us laugh with their self-deprecating humour and gently made fun of us at the same time, (We needed it!). Some of the collections have literally taken our breath away and all of them have been captivating, beautiful and meticulously put together by their owners. During the last weekend the house has had about 250 people through the doors and by the end of each three hours opening the faces of the lovely students on the door must have hurt from smiling so much. Their effort in curating a door collection has been remarkable and we are beginning to see just how much of a snapshot of the footfall through the exhibition this will leave. We have been given everything from personal letters, (including the birth and death certificates of one lady’s elder brother who died aged three before she was born), to Amy’s pencil troll and from a remarkable Victorian boot button hook to the conker that a child had found the previous afternoon. I can’t wait to see this little collection on display. It will be a real legacy piece.
Blodwyn, (no longer trending on twitter but still the star of the show), stretched out full length on the rug in the white room when we relaid it as if, as she had always suspected, this whole event was just a moment of madness on the part of her humans, and that she felt vindicated, now that order had finally been restored. We have untied the St Leonard’s bell ropes from where they had been suspended down the stairwell from Chris’s old garden rakes and they are now sitting in a furry coil next to the cases of bells waiting to be delivered back to the tower. The figurines have gone back to Bhim and Yogesh, their porcelain faces swathed in bubble wrap to stop their noses chipping and we have taken down the notices and postcards and the Jaques family tree leaving a trail of little black sticky squares on the paintwork as if the house had recovered from a particularly gruesome strain of pox.
As we swept up all the polystyrene balls and wrapped up all the ladybird mugs we immediately started to ask ourselves what next ? So many people have asked us, this weekend, where this exhibition will go next, when can they come back and see it and what will we do next at the hall. The honest answer is that we don’t know. This was always intended to be a short project; a pop-up opportunity to celebrate a particular place and time. Hearing the buzz of excitement this has created we have begun to think of how we can replicate the experience, not with another exhibition necessarily, but with some other project which reflects ordinary lives and celebrates our shared human experience. After each museum day we have sat down and shared a bottle of fizzy wine or two and shouted gleefully about all the things we’re interested in creating next. Prosecco hour has become
a sort of ideas exchange, with added objects for tripping over. I can already hear a cork popping in the other room……. time to start thinking of a new project.
Thank you to everyone who came to visit, who came back with relatives and friends, who lent us their collections, filled in the visitors book and contributed to the door collection. We could not have done it without you.