boxes: detail
kate: two mexican dolls
My memories of my year in Mexico are still so vivid - it seems strange we haven't got around to sharing our memories of our travels in later life - at least, not yet!
My memories of my year in Mexico are still so vivid - it seems strange we haven't got around to sharing our memories of our travels in later life - at least, not yet!
di: my first three boxes
First three boxes created for the collection, chosen for the sizes of the objects. An old Kodak film box, a plain white cardboard box and the suitcase at the bottom . This one came to life when Nick was sorting out our attic in Carlisle, he said what is this in here? I exclaimed ‘It’s Susan’. And so she stayed.
First three boxes created for the collection, chosen for the sizes of the objects. An old Kodak film box, a plain white cardboard box and the suitcase at the bottom . This one came to life when Nick was sorting out our attic in Carlisle, he said what is this in here? I exclaimed ‘It’s Susan’. And so she stayed.
kate: my mother’s dressing table
The china basket of flowers almost masks the box of Coty L’Aimant face powder. Both lived on my mother’s dressing table alongside a bottle of Coty L’Aimant cologne. As a child these seemed to me the epitome of glamour and sophistication. In the tbottom right-hand corner is a silver thimble - my mum always seemed to be mending and darning...
The china basket of flowers almost masks the box of Coty L’Aimant face powder. Both lived on my mother’s dressing table alongside a bottle of Coty L’Aimant cologne. As a child these seemed to me the epitome of glamour and sophistication. In the tbottom right-hand corner is a silver thimble - my mum always seemed to be mending and darning...
di: susan
She has reappeared in a photograph – squashed into a little box on wheels making do as a pram. I must have been just three. I named her Susan, she is still in my possession, packed in a small leather case, her severed head and limbs fitted around the torso with a few of 'her' clothes.
I can still remember the personalities I gave my dolls. Susan was sweet-natured and gentle, Brenda rather naughty and sometimes unkind, Margaret – a tall standing doll with hair, half my height when I had her (won at a Selfridge's Fair – how long it took to choose her from the array of toys in front of me!), was rather bossy and not as endearing. But then later came Rosie – the perfect baby doll – she could even drink from her bottle and wet her nappy! She had all the pretty white clothes – knitted jumpers and leggings with feet attached for winter – in summer a white satiny dress with puffed sleeves and a sash...! And so, eventually, I suppose, and probably inevitably, I became a mother.
She has reappeared in a photograph – squashed into a little box on wheels making do as a pram. I must have been just three. I named her Susan, she is still in my possession, packed in a small leather case, her severed head and limbs fitted around the torso with a few of 'her' clothes.
I can still remember the personalities I gave my dolls. Susan was sweet-natured and gentle, Brenda rather naughty and sometimes unkind, Margaret – a tall standing doll with hair, half my height when I had her (won at a Selfridge's Fair – how long it took to choose her from the array of toys in front of me!), was rather bossy and not as endearing. But then later came Rosie – the perfect baby doll – she could even drink from her bottle and wet her nappy! She had all the pretty white clothes – knitted jumpers and leggings with feet attached for winter – in summer a white satiny dress with puffed sleeves and a sash...! And so, eventually, I suppose, and probably inevitably, I became a mother.
di: cuddly teddy
'Cuddly Teddy' being the closest it came to having a name. I have a photo of me with it when I was about two years old, sitting on a patch of grass, and it also figures in a studio portrait of me taken a year or so later. Always remaining my 'favourite teddy' amongst all the others that collected around me, it now has a partner – Nick's favourite teddy from a similar era. They lie in a box protected from further moth damage. When I draw these toys now, they become like living beings with changing expressions – strong presences emerging with the pencil lines. I'm drawing my brother’s toys too – 'Sooty', 'Larry', 'Lucy'. How did they appear to us through our childhood eyes? Did they soothe, comfort, threaten us in dreams? Seeing with the eyes of a child.
'Cuddly Teddy' being the closest it came to having a name. I have a photo of me with it when I was about two years old, sitting on a patch of grass, and it also figures in a studio portrait of me taken a year or so later. Always remaining my 'favourite teddy' amongst all the others that collected around me, it now has a partner – Nick's favourite teddy from a similar era. They lie in a box protected from further moth damage. When I draw these toys now, they become like living beings with changing expressions – strong presences emerging with the pencil lines. I'm drawing my brother’s toys too – 'Sooty', 'Larry', 'Lucy'. How did they appear to us through our childhood eyes? Did they soothe, comfort, threaten us in dreams? Seeing with the eyes of a child.
di: sofa
It's my earliest memory – sitting behind a sofa, secretly chewing on one of my father's cigarettes that I'd pinched from his cigarette box on the coffee table. The box was leather with two compartments. I remember how horrible the cigarette tasted and getting little loose bits of tobacco stuck in my mouth. I was not yet two years old. I associate the sofa with feathers – my fear of them. I have an image of my mother and father blowing them towards me whilst I was crouched in terror behind the sofa so that they wouldn't touch me. The photograph in the box is of me sitting behind the sofa with stacking bricks. Surprisingly the smallest brick is still in my possession and is also in the box
It's my earliest memory – sitting behind a sofa, secretly chewing on one of my father's cigarettes that I'd pinched from his cigarette box on the coffee table. The box was leather with two compartments. I remember how horrible the cigarette tasted and getting little loose bits of tobacco stuck in my mouth. I was not yet two years old. I associate the sofa with feathers – my fear of them. I have an image of my mother and father blowing them towards me whilst I was crouched in terror behind the sofa so that they wouldn't touch me. The photograph in the box is of me sitting behind the sofa with stacking bricks. Surprisingly the smallest brick is still in my possession and is also in the box
kate: candlestick & napkin ring
These date from the time, probably in her fifties, when my mum seemed at her most creative and her most free. As well as regular yoga, she moved from making lampshades to jewellery and from there to silversmithing, producing a silver jug and a platter, both of which were lost in a burglary, as well as the napkin ring and candlestick here, along with a candle snuffer. The napkin ring is engraved with Jack’s initials – somewhere there was one for me which I can’t find, as well as a number of gold rings and brooches, unworn. Following a friend’s advice, I sold most of these to enable me to buy a ring that I would wear and wearing think of Mum. It’s not exactly that I regret – or maybe that is what I feel? Certainly there is a lingering sadness...
These date from the time, probably in her fifties, when my mum seemed at her most creative and her most free. As well as regular yoga, she moved from making lampshades to jewellery and from there to silversmithing, producing a silver jug and a platter, both of which were lost in a burglary, as well as the napkin ring and candlestick here, along with a candle snuffer. The napkin ring is engraved with Jack’s initials – somewhere there was one for me which I can’t find, as well as a number of gold rings and brooches, unworn. Following a friend’s advice, I sold most of these to enable me to buy a ring that I would wear and wearing think of Mum. It’s not exactly that I regret – or maybe that is what I feel? Certainly there is a lingering sadness...
Kate: a suitcase full of memories
A battered leather suitcase very similar to the one in Di’s photograph – I wonder how many such relics from the first half of the twentieth century have turned up in lofts and attics? I think it belonged to my father. Now it holds a collection of my memories
di: the three bears
Daddy bear, mummy bear and baby bear – they belonged to my mother when she was a child. Daddy bear had a blue waistcoat made of felt and a white tie, the mummy one a red skirt and white apron. Now moth-eaten away. When she gave them to me, I remember playing with them – they figure in a photograph of me in the garden. They had a square painted table and three matching chairs and tiny light wooden bowls, all now lost. Nevertheless the bears have survived, although worse for the wear, I keep them now in a box.
Daddy bear, mummy bear and baby bear – they belonged to my mother when she was a child. Daddy bear had a blue waistcoat made of felt and a white tie, the mummy one a red skirt and white apron. Now moth-eaten away. When she gave them to me, I remember playing with them – they figure in a photograph of me in the garden. They had a square painted table and three matching chairs and tiny light wooden bowls, all now lost. Nevertheless the bears have survived, although worse for the wear, I keep them now in a box.
di: teenage years
I fell in love with a boy on the train. Secretly, I called him ‘my darling’. I kept a note in my School Girls’ Diary, whether I had seen him or not each day for about a year. A long story, but one day he turned up on a bike at my house’s garden gate. I invited him to a matinee at the Royal Covent Garden opera house. It pretty much ended there.
I fell in love with a boy on the train. Secretly, I called him ‘my darling’. I kept a note in my School Girls’ Diary, whether I had seen him or not each day for about a year. A long story, but one day he turned up on a bike at my house’s garden gate. I invited him to a matinee at the Royal Covent Garden opera house. It pretty much ended there.
di: christening robes
Christened, I expect, at St Mary’s Church in Ely, dressed in the silk and lace robes. My mother kept them. I don’t know if I was christened before my father returned from the war, but there is a photograph of me wearing them.
Christened, I expect, at St Mary’s Church in Ely, dressed in the silk and lace robes. My mother kept them. I don’t know if I was christened before my father returned from the war, but there is a photograph of me wearing them.
kate: the african connection
A box which has made it only obliquely into my selection, in this case the box is a tobacco tin – for years it retained the sweet rich smell of its original contents. Now it is as it arrived in the post at my West London squat, a small collection of things gathered on a beach on the other side of the world. It’s accompanied by a luggage label and a street map of Durban, all I needed to get me to the mission hospital in the Transkei where I would be met. In fact this box highlights the gap that had grown between sender and recipient and marks the end of a relationship so it’s perhaps telling that the memory – memories – have been absorbed into those of London and Paris