the Émile Hermès Collection: Objects of Curiosity

French or English (?) (maker(s) unknown)

Wig Rest 

circa early to mid-nineteenth century

(blown glass, paint and water-coloured engravings)

     This orb is as striking as it is curious. Up close, it appears to be anything than what it actually is. Neatly laid out across the inner face of its sphere, the frozen circus of humanised beasts - each impeccably dressed - floats against the starry backdrop of speckled golds and of sprays of inky blues and reds and greens. A squatting donkey plays a red flute while its companion neighs and struts to its own improvised song; a slender brown bird, music sheets in hand, gazes up keenly at a perching parrot, posed with its wings outstretched, who stares intently into the beyond, at us; and a large kneeling camel, its arm resting gently on what looks like a wooden barrel, attired as a casual Middle Eastern, its lush beard swathing its neck and its blue-striped sash nipping its waist tightly. As its audience, intent on discovering its secret, we fall under the orb’s spell. We peer closer and closer into its seamless window; its skies seem to scintillate and shimmer, playing slight tricks with our eyes and casting our unsuspecting imaginations farther than we may be ready to accept.

     And it is at this point that the orb’s literal function makes sense. More than being a miniature world of fantasy; more than showcasing a precise degree of anonymous handiwork and technical skill; and more than representing an era in which new forms of printing made way for refined standards in decorative art, this glass orb is an emblem of the human mind. It is a gateway stylised to the fashions of its epoch, a gateway both in the metaphysical and simply physical senses. It dedicates a part of its time to visually luring in the curious, using its props to toy between fact and fiction, while during the rest of its time promptly becoming the artificial mind underneath a fancy (or not) weave of hair.

20th Century Film

A Room with a View (Merchant Ivory)

starring Helena Bonham-Carter, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench (etc.)

circa 1985

(based on the novel by E.M. Forster)

     This is Lucy, wonderful Lucy. She is mischievous, clever, curious and passionate, but also confused - repressed. On paper, Forster renders Lucy’s character as that of an open book: one that, though seeming to be wide open, has yet to reveal its début, its epiphany of being, through some form of outlet she knows she is meant to discover, soon. This frustrates her. One feels that at any moment she may implode emotionally because of her introverted sense of expressing a feeling she has yet to understand, let alone to identify. This said, it takes more than either one good read or watch to then understand the importance of George, an equally-introverted (perhaps moreso) young man whose budding acquaintance with Lucy (much to the tutting though harmless disapproval of Charlotte) sets off a sudden spark within her. Like a fawn, she is clumsy and scared of these new feelings. But despite the exciting allure they give her, she tears what she feels to be her guilty interest away from George, convincing herself that what she sees as the good in him would only be destructive to her. Her past dictates order and control, though her mind and body scream to be rescued from such restrictions. In her power to deceive and resist, she warps reality in order to maintain this control, but in doing so she unknowingly brings the truth closer. 

     And it is at the beginning of her story that, ironically, we see its end unveiled, subtly. As the first marker to weaken the storm within Lucy, however minimally, it is a certain Mr. Emerson who recognises it as similar to that in his own son, George. He not only inadvertently lends her a masterpiece of advice, but he also sets off the plot's clockwork. Under the domes of the Florentine church in which they stand, and in her light blue dress and bushy braided hair, a contemplating Lucy digests his words: 

If you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible (…). You are inclined to get muddled - pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself.

Cartier: the Bangle

Cartier, by Atelier Henri Lavabre

'Soudanais' Bangles

circa 1919 (t) and 1920 (b)

(coral, onyx, ivory, enamel and diamond)

     Classic, spectacular Cartier pieces. Each has a swag of its own, with one dancing to its own bouncing dots, wiggling lizard tails and berries of popping coral while the other sways to the deep drum of its echoing, domed mosque and to the wedding dance taking place below its arch, patterned with swirling skirts, dried leaves and pattering feet. Tinges of African rhythm and Oriental charm snake through the bangles' cores, loud and playful and colourful. They carry the sweet and rough scents of the Sudan. They mime facets of an equatorial culture. They shed the native songs they have been taught to hum against the skins of their wearers. But while these bangles are meant to be inspired fragments of a country seen as foreign and exotic by Cartier's clientèle (and by its mere admirers), it is most likely the represented country itself which would find such fragments as most foreign.