London - Day 3

On Day 3 we had arranged to meet joysdaughter for a fabric store tour! We took a wrong turn out of the tube station so we were 10 minutes late, but she patiently waited for us. We started at a department store - the kind we used to have in the States, that sells clothes and makeup and upholstery fabric and curtains. (Sure, Mal-Wart sells all that, but it's a bit downscale.) She took us to a notions shop and several little fabric shops that had the most gorgeous silks - especially the last one we stopped at. There was some silk with rows of black embroidery, would have made some amazing blackworked looking sleeves. I was a very good girl and I restrained myself. As joysdaughter pointed out, London doesn't have any "one stop shopping" for sewers, which can be good and bad. It was so nice to meet her, and to see a bit of London that was off the beaten path.

shipbrook and I decided to spend the rest of the day at the V&A museum. I just couldn't wait anymore to see it! There's a path underground that takes you straight from the Rube station to the entry of the museum - most convenient. In the very first room we saw an amazing spinet encrusted with semiprecious stones. They let you take pictures there, so I'll have to upload some of the shots. The fashion display was a bit disappointing, (I want the old stuff, not stuff I remember my parents wearing!) except for a new acquisition of theirs, an early 17th c. lady's jacket. The fabric is a pale cream color and is embellished with swirly designs. It looks so modern! Another nice surprise was the copy of Beatrice d'Este's tomb effigy. The V&A has these two rooms stuffed full of casts of original works from the medieval and renaissance periods. I just can't imagine how they managed to make a cast of an immense cathedral doorway, or Trajan's Column, or David...We spent lots of time in the Elizabethan collection (Ah! There are the old clothes!), and I wished I had a tripod with me so I could take pictures of their fabric collection, each sample neatly stretched in a glass frame. Oh, and the portrait miniatures. Amazing! The details on those little, tiny works of art. And the Devonshire Hunt tapestries, so huge! By the time we got to the silver gallery, I was almost on art overload. I said, "treasure bath! treasure bath!" (You need to have seen History of the World Part I for that to make sense). Many books were bought, I assure you. Unfortunately, they were about to open a new gift shop so they didn't have a ton of goodies, but the books are just fine.