French General Chateau Getaway 2011 is already in place. Sign ups are happening! We had an excellent time last year. We met amazing people. And I haven't even begun to write about all the things we saw, did, ate, experienced. There's many a post, sitting idle, with copious photos languishing in iphoto, to be had. I will write about them: ALL!
Okay, most... it was a lot of experience!
In the meantime, if there's one thing the French General adventure taught me this past summer, it's this: textiles are close to godliness.
Yeah, I knew I loved them: the feel of the weave, the beauty in the strings. But this past summer, Kaari, Kick and I had the opportunity to dig thru some of the greats: Older than old, mysteries woven by the way of the warp and the weft. We even inspected some unbelievable tapestries at eye level, fingering the unfinished yarns.
You never know what you'll find in an old textile.
There are crazy stories included in these threads and hems that we'll never know... if only this stuff could talk!
We guess at the age of the fabric, we guess at the usefulness of the piece, we guess which room it hung in or what trunk it was stuck in all these years. We guess at who the people really were that worked on that tapestry that hangs in the cathedral, what they went through, and if they would ever have thought that so few people would still keep that tradition going today. We try to become experts at quoting a year, identifying a string type, a dye, a colors name.
And always, of course, no matter what, cop a feel.
3 comments:
interesting post; often reflect and ponder if 'things' could communicate and chatter. oh the gossip, the history tied up in all of our everyday objects...
i have to shed a tear or two - since most of those pieces are lost...they never reached home. So sad...
These are so beautiful. Like some many other 'everyday' things, textiles are the repositories of so many special stories.
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