London: The Roots of Beauty

All museums are a display of pirate plunder, intrepid curators and donors showing off gorgeous swag to admiring patrons and peasants - with a touch of my mom coming home from shopping having finally found the perfect something to go with the difficult but precious something else. None more so than the Victoria & Albert, which for years I considered a combination of treasure house and whimsical hardware store. You want to study brocades? Hundreds of examples, up there to the right. Sixteenth century wrought-iron locks and keys? Up one floor, through there, end of the hall. The Costumes collection makes me wish I believed in past lives and wore those things in them. Especially the things dating from before the invention of the waist cincher. And the shoes! Enough moaning, we've been lucky enough to be in town while an exhibit called The Roots of Beauty is open. It traces the origin and spread of the Aesthetic Movement in England, and from there to North America and to Europe, inspiring Art Nouveau and its child Wiener Werkstatt. We're all familiar with Tiffany lamps and Liberty prints: this is where they came from. "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful," declared the Aesthetics, and they were right.

Hopelessly romantic, perhaps - even I, lover of green velvet and gold jewelry that twists and twines, wouldn't wear aesthetic garb to an office - but daringly modern in the beliefs that clothing should be comfortable and long-wearing, furniture should be attractive and practical, and that art should make our days on earth bearable. They let fresh air in stuffy Victorian rooms, and minds. I loved this exhibit, only wished there had been more of it.

Before trudging over to the V&A, we grabbed a roll and coffee in Shepherd's Market, and pressed our noses against the windows of a favorite shop:




Tin soldiers: you won some, you lose some.

After the museum, we wandered through Harrods Food Hall, not what it once was, but still fun.

the fish display

part of the cheese display

incredibly expensive cherries

All just to whet an appetite for dinner.