London Trip

We've recently begun our final major project for our confirmatory stage. For my theme I have picked Natural Formation vs Man-made Formation, and so far I seem to be leaning towards looking at how we try to imitate nature with patterns and structure.
Yesterday we had a college visit to London to visit the galleries. I did most of my work in the V and A, with some observational drawings in the natural history museum.


Embroidery
One of the first things to catch my eye was this hanging scroll from the China section. The detail and use of colours was fantastic, and the overall composition managed to be very interesting and complex without having too much going on. I am considering doing some experimental stitch work based on my project so far.

Katana and Hand Guards

Again, the colour and detail caught my eye, as well as the decorative use of natural form, created with man-made techniques. Apologies for blurry images.

Inro and Netsuke

During the Edo period, intricately decorated pouches called Inro were used to carry seals, money and tobacco. Netsuke, the little carved pieces in the pictures bellow, were small sculpture pieces used to secure the ties used to hold the inro. 

I thought that the different forms of the netsuke were really nice, especially as they developed a wider range of shapes as you went along. It really made me want to try carving at a small scale.

Other Pieces of Interest

A few more things I saw at the Victoria and Albert that I thought related in with my project.

Bookcase "This Mortal Coil", by Ron Arad, 1993. An exploration of steel tension, this immediately made me think of the shell work I had done, and Fibonacci's spiral.

Vertumnus and Pomona, Laurent Delvaux (1725) and Pluto and Proserpina, Vincenzo de Rossi (1565-70) were two statue pieces that I picked out for their links to nature. Vertumnus was a nature god able to assume any form, using this to woo the nymph Pomona, and Proserpina was a goddess associated with spring and growth. This made me wonder if I could use Pluto's abduction of Proserpina as a parallel to my theme.