Victoria and Albert Museum – My Top Ten Heritage Sites – No 9
The Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum
The world famous and world renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, is the leading art and design museum in the world. It’s home to work by the some of the greatest crafts people from around the world, all under one roof.
My crafts
I’m very good at crafts. I’ve tried many over the years. I came top in metal work at school and also did woodwork, and hot and cold enamelling. I’ve done macrame, lace making, batik painting, costume making, photography (obvs), drawing and painting, pottery, jewellery making, narl binding (viking crochet), crochet, DIY, cooking & baking. In fact I can usually turn my hand to most crafts and produce a reasonable result with little training.
I love visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum for inspiration. There is so much to see that it can be over whelming when you first walk in. Where do you start? Yesterday I came in via the underground tunnel from South Ken station, so came into the museum on the ground floor sculpture area, near the semi permanent exhibition space. Currently it’s showing an exhibition of Mary Quant design classics. I wanted to see other pieces yesterday so left this exhibition for another time. But from the little I could see when I was in the upper galleries, it looks very interesting.
I decided to take an early lunch so had a salad in the cafe in the outside square, as it wasn’t too cold. As a Londoner and regular visitor to the Victoria and Albert Museum you can take for granted just how impressive and ornate the building is, forgetting that for visitors like the couple I was sat next to who were talking about it, it’s very awe inspiring and over whelming. As a museum for design and craft, it certainly walks the walk and talks the talk.
The sculpture galleries
I wandered up to the sculpture gallery, not somewhere I’ve been before. The first thing I saw was an amazing wooden carving – see photo gallery. I loved how intricate it is. Then I saw a beautiful shell carving. The subtlety in both carvings was stunning.
The Cast Courts
On each side of the gallery are the Cast Courts. These house casts of existing sculptures. The pieces that really blew my mind were the two tall columns, intricately decorated with carving in a spiral all the way up.
The ironwork gallery
Then I wandered along into the Ironwork gallery where they had wrought iron pieces from modern to medieval. I was particularly take with a beautiful black rose and a gate that had a skull in the middle of it. Very appropriate given that we’ve just celebrated Halloween.
The jewellery gallery
The Silverwork gallery
To get to the silver work gallery I had to retrace my steps through the ironwork gallery and then go through the jewellery section. I didn’t want to get too distracted by all the bling (of which there is a lot), so just whizzed through that fairly fast. But I did get sidetracked by a couple of pieces 🙂
Through the miniatures section (pictures by famous miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard), then through into the silver work gallery. All that glitters isn’t always gold. Sometimes it’s silver too. At one point I did look at taking up silver smithing as a hobby, but it proved too expensive. Now I just admire all the shiny bling 🙂
The shop at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Then it was a quick tour of the shop. This is where I got some of the reference material I used when I was rebranding a couple of years ago. They had some lovely peacock items in then, which inspired me. Once again all the gifts, books and items were beautifully designed and I was seriously tempted.
If you’ve ever felt that you weren’t creative here are a few tips to help you.
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