Victoria, Albert, and Jack

Day 13:

After a late night getting back from Stratford last night, we are off bright and early for the Victoria & Albert Museum (or the V&A) and the National Art Library.  I was stunned immediately upon walking into the Rotunda by the Chihuly sculpture hanging from the ceiling.  There had been a Chihuly exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts this past year, but I didn't get a chance to see it.  I am glad I got to see this piece, though, because it is spectacular!

Chihuly piece

We headed upstairs for our meeting with the assistant librarian of the National Art Library.  She told us a little about the library itself and how it is set up.  The collections cover approximately 1 million items relating to art.  The library serves three functions.  First, it is a reading room for the V&A.  Second, it is the research library for V&A staff. Finally, the librarians act as curators for the V&A materials.  They collect books as art pieces as well as for their content. 

National Art Library Reading Room

Reading Room View from Above

About 30,000 visitors use the library each year.  Of those, about half are art or design students.  The rest are academics (teachers or students in other fields), genealogists, researchers looking for information about provenance of an item.  Because they do not have open access stacks, users must request materials ahead of time online.  Users can reserve materials for up to three days, if necessary.  Additionally, users have access to electronic databases such as JSTOR, but they are only available on site.  However, they are working to change this in the near future.  The library's collection includes 11,000 periodicals from common magazines such as Vogue, Harper's, or Tattler to journals that are more specific to the art world such as Art Journal or Atheneum.  They have some complete runs of periodicals, too, which is a rarity.

They have a yearly acquisitions budget that is 170,000 pound, but most of their items still mainly come from donations. One donation from the Foster family gave the library 11,000 items.  Within this bequest was a Dickens manuscript, a 1st Folio from William Shakespeare, a poem by Keats, and DaVinci Codices. 

After showing us around the library, our guide showed us some of the library's treasures.  We got to see an illuminated manuscript from 1400.  The Book of Hours includes 10 miniatures and would have included 10 more, but someone removed them many years ago to display them separately.  The book has been rebound in both the 18th and 20th centuries, and it has the binding history in the back which is not always the case. 

Next, she told us about a facsimile of a Leonardo da Vinci codex that was created in 1992.  The original was from 1493-1505.  The facsimile itself is worth at least 20,000 pound. 

The next treasure she showed us was a book of lithographic plates.  The 42 pictures were published in 1832 by Edward Lear (most known as a limerick poet).  This book was his first publication, and he had subscribers give him money to help him cover the cost of publishing the book.  The list of subscribers is in the front of the book.  The lithographs are life-sized drawings of parrots that he drew from living birds instead of stuffed birds as others used.  Lear was compared to Audubon because of this book.  The drawings are so life-like, and the colors are vibrant.

 She showed us a box created by Geneviève Seillé in 1990.  It shows her interest in graffiti, medieval literature, magic, words, and letters.  There is no meaning or symbolism behind the "book item," which comes apart and is covered with writing and is full of hidden compartments and secrets. 

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After the V&A, a few of us went to Hyde Park on an unsuccessful search for the statue of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy that apparently has been put into the Serpentine there.  Sadly, we did not find it, so we came back to King's College to be productive for the rest of the afternoon since we were going on a Jack the Ripper Walk at night.  

The Jack the Ripper Walk began near the Tower of London and took us to a few of the sites of the murders, past the "Prostitutes' Church" where Jack picked up his victims (or they picked him up), to the site where the bloody knife was found with the cryptic message about the Jews, into the East End, and ended at the Ten Bells Pub where the final victim spent time drinking.  It lasted almost two hours, and our guide did not hold back on the graphic parts.  One person in our tour said, "Wow! I didn't realize that it would be so violent."  I'm not sure what she thought she would be getting when she took a tour of a serial killer's haunts, but I got what I paid for, I think.  The guide talked about the five victims (some people claim six victims, but most "Ripperologists" only count five), who they were and how they lived their lives.  He talked about the rivalry between the police forces, even sharing stories about police officers from one force dressing up as prostitutes and heading into the other force's territory to try to trap the killer and then getting arrested.  He showed us where bodies were found and explained what it would have looked like 123 years ago.  We saw the "Prostitutes' Church" and the old gates between the East End and the City of London.  At the end of the walk, he discussed the four main suspects considered by the police then.  None were ever convicted or even tried, so no one will ever know who Jack the Ripper really was.  The walk was really interesting, and it made me want to go read more about the subject.  

Old City Gates and the Prostitutes Church