In case you have not yet had fun peering into windows showing exotic treasures, you should give yourself 15 minutes to search through the "windows" available on the Victoria and Albert Museum's website. The wonders you will see!
There are several pages devoted to Beatrix Potter complete with her illustrations and the illustrations of Caldecott whom she admired (you may remember I mentioned him in my December 9, 2011, entry on the Hyde Collection). Even better, there are samples of her botanical illustrations in which she portrayed her subjects in botanical correctness but also used her artistic sense to make them beautiful as pieces of art.
Then there are the textiles . . . oh my! Such lovelies to swoon over. Indeed, it was a particular textile that took me to the V&AM site to begin with. I was so wonderstruck by it that I sent the URL to several friends. It's about a cape made and embroidered simply to be a beautiful, one-of-a-kind garment. If you do watch the video, you will see the cape on a model, but the point was not fashion; the point was to do something that hadn't been done before and probably will never be attempted again. Why? The cape was made from the silk of the Golden Orb Spider, and yes, you will see the spiders on the video (if that bothers you, you can still see a bit of the cape at the address below with no spiders in sight). In short, to truly appreciate the cape, go to:
To find out more, click on the video and be prepared to be astounded.
When you have caught your breath and recovered, promise yourself you'll go back to the site later to look in more "windows". There's a lot to enjoy.
I tried to view the golden-spider video but could only see very small chunks of it at a time. I never got past the first 7 seconds of the film because it took so long to upload each segment. I wonder how you got to see the video. I know my computer is not unusually slow--it really is very new. So I'm puzzled.
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