Chapter Six: In Which We Are Charmed by Victoria and Albert

The day began with... you know.

We walked over to Gower Street to catch the number 10 over to the Museum and met this pigeon or dove or something (you can tell that this is Kelly talking and not the bird freak). Whatever it is, we don't have them in Toronto.

Sara here: it is a wood pigeon. You can tell by the size, white collar, black squared-off tail with black trim, and when it flies, the white flashes on its wings.

Once we got to the Museum, we realized that Sara needed coffee, stat, so we went to the cafeteria. Not too shabby for a cafeteria: it had these three beautiful rooms (if a little ornate). This largest room was designed by James Gamble in the classical revival style, featuring an enamelled iron ceiling and ceramic tiled walls.


This room was designed by Edward Poynter.


Here are some details from the stained glass window above:



Around the room are these pictures in ceramic tile (painted by female students from the neighbouring art school) depicting the months and seasons. Is this woman inviting the bird into her house because she wants bad luck or because she needs a hot meal?


The third room was designed by William Morris in his first public commission; the inspiration was mediaeval.


Fear not; there was normal, modern, Ikea-style space available in which to eat, too:

For those of you wondering, this was where we ate lunch. Kelly had a rather abstemious bowl of spinach and mushroom soup while Sara had the Sunday roast: pork, with crackling, roast potatoes, and crisp green vegetables (yes, we are still in Britain).

The cafeteria was really a great example of what the V&A seemed to be all about: lots of detail, lots of variety, lots of stuff! Here are two different stairways in the V&A, in completely different materials and styles:



Never mind the collections; the building itself was beautiful, even if parts of it are not to everyone's taste. Here's the floor in the mediaeval section in between the Cast Courts:


Now, on to collections. We started the day with William Morris, Charles Rennie McIntosh and others in the Arts and Crafts movement:




This lion is from the beginning of the silver gallery; he's a replica of one of three life-sized silver lions which guard the throne of the King of Denmark.

And this is just part of the silver gallery:


From another part of the Museum, a classical bust of a young Queen Victoria, wearing a wreath of English roses rather than Roman laurel:


We turned a corner and came upon this hallway full of iron-work:


In the Museum's entrance hangs this enormous sculpture of blown glass:


The tapestry room, small compared to most of the V&A galleries, held three enormous tapestries which had been allocated to the V&A after being given to the government in lieu of taxes by the estate of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. That guy must have owed a lot in taxes!


Also in the tapestry room, this much smaller tapestry of a unicorn surrounded by flowers:


Here's something else we just happened to stumble upon: the Cast Courts. We were walking through a gallery of small sculptures when we looked to the side and saw a huge room full of statues, doors, pulpits, effigies, etc., some still in their packing crates. It was like a combination warehouse and workshop.


When we looked to the other side of the gallery, there was another room full of the same sort of thing. The two pillars are casts of Trajan's Column in Rome. The one to the left is actually supposed to go on top of the one to the right, but the ceiling isn't high enough...


Most of the monuments in these two rooms, although they don't look it, are plaster casts of monuments from all over the world. They were done by the Museum as educational pieces but now they have become the only record of ancient treasures that have been destroyed.


Here are casts of effigies from the Temple (a church of the Knights Templar, just off Fleet Street).


This is a detail from the effigy of Eleanor of Aquitaine.


This is a detail from the Schreyer-Landauer Monument in Nuremberg (c. 1490). The figures on this monument are life-sized, if not bigger.


This North Netherlandish sculpture of Mercury and Psyche was made in 1593 for Emperor Rudolf II.


We have so many pictures from the Cast Courts, but let's move on. We came upon these squashed brass instruments hanging from the ceiling in one room...


and then met them later from the room below.


The V&A isn't all old stuff. There was a great gallery of 20th century design.


And here are a couple of other artifacts just hanging out in the hallways at the Museum:


This is a "figure of a king" from the Bristol High Cross (market cross), c. 1400. Sara liked it because the king is feeding the bird a fish.

And so ended our visit to the V&A, which lasted hours longer than we had intended. We had just enough time to check out the gift shop and then head to a few stores before they closed: the Conran Shop, Divertimenti (a kitchen wares store), and Harrods. Harrods was a cesspit of tourists.

Six o'clock, and time to head to the tube and get back to the hotel. It took quite a while to download the day's pictures! Thank goodness for digital cameras, which allow you to trash all the garbage shots.

We finished the evening at Carluccio's, the same place we dined Wednesday evening. We shared a green salad and calamari to start; then we switched roles and Sara had the pasta con funghi while Kelly had the meaty lasagna. This evening we went whole hog and had dessert, too: Sara had espresso with Amalfi lemon sorbet with lingue di gatto, and Kelly had chamomile tea with cioccolato fondente (chocolate molten cake with vanilla ice cream).

A long but wonder-filled day.... Early to bed so we could get up early to catch our boat down the Thames the next morning.