Mick grew up in South East Asia, in his teens his family moved back to England. Since their return in 1972 he has moved from house to house, taking a plank of Malaysian hardwood with him, it had no apparent use but he was unable to part with it. Finally he attached some hooks to it and hung it on the wall as a coat rack. The wood is stencilled with his family’s name, it comes from the packing cases that transported their possessions back to London on the SS Glenogle. Every time Mick gets his coat he is reminded how lucky he was to grow up in South East Asia.
10 Jul 2011
Sophie has always loved ribbon. A job at VV Rouleaux, a ribbon ‘emporium’, helped mend a broken heart when she was in her twenties. A friend collected two metres of ribbon from a series of luxe shops for her Christmas present one year. Her husband designed a striped grosgrain ribbon and had it specially produced as a birthday present. She uses her ribbons to wrap presents only when she knows they’ll be appreciated. They’re stored in a transparent box, so they can always be looked at. The box contains twenty years worth of collecting, it’s layers like rock strata, preserving memories in sequence.
03 Jul 2011
Ana collected pods and dried seeds scattered over the desert floor as she travelled through Namibia, they were too beautiful not to take home. At the end of the trip, knowing she wasn’t meant to bring seeds into the UK, she guiltily packed them onto the plane. On returning home she opened the box, it was peppered with cocoons and crawling with small white insects. She left it on a shelf for the insects to die, then moved them to a darker shelf thinking they might continue to thrive with light. Two years later she returned to the box, the insects were still alive. She resolved to starve them of oxygen tightly knotting a plastic bag around the box. Six months passed before she looked again, her guilt had thrived – guilt for taking them from their habitat, guilt that generations of the insects must have hatched in the box and struggled to survive, guilt for her desire to preserve her African memories in some physical form. The insects were still alive, to assuage her guilt she put the box in the freezer, this is where they remain. She hopes that this will finally kill them.
26 Jun 2011
This hand carved Virgin Mary was given to David’s mother after a skiing trip in Austria. It’s striking because, although he’s an obsessive collector of objects, the statue conforms to none of David’s normal criteria. Generally his objects are designed for a very particular function but often their use can’t be easily identified – from what appears to be an enlarged, skeletal, cane cigar (a Filipino fish trap) to a dunce’s cap made from solid wood (actually a device for shaping organ pipes). The statue is all the more poignant then for standing apart from his collection and more poignant still since he found it, evidently treasured, in his mother’s house just after her death. He had given it to her over fifty years earlier.
19 Jun 2011
A Candy Stripe Rye bowl, produced between ’47 and ’52. Post-war austerity still dictated that limited colours were used. The design was probably the product of work made during Saturday morning studio sessions where apprentices were encouraged by Jack and Wally Cole, the owners, to experiment. Paul picked it up at an antique market in Salisbury.
12 Jun 2011
Donna’s great grandad had a draper’s shop in Portsoy in north east Scotland, the box, which originally would have held cotton yarn, was given to his daughter. Living in wartime she had learnt to be frugal, finding a use for everything. She filled the box with precious bits and bobs – rickrack, little envelopes of lace cuttings, Christmas tree decorations and old thread. When Donna was given the box by her grandmother it was still full. Her grandmother was responsible for teaching her to draw and paint, she was Donna’s biggest inspiration, she was uncommonly open-minded and keen to help anyone. Long before Donna even knew what a designer was her grandmother had framed her drawings and sold them at local craft fairs. Donna now works as a textile designer, the box lives in her studio.
04 Jun 2011
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