Victoria & albert museum
If asked to name my favourite museum, without hesitation it would be the Victoria & Albert; the world’s largest and most brilliant depository of decorative arts, situated smack bang in the middle of Kensington, just down the road from the Royal College of Art.
As a student, the V&A was my emergency art fix – a place where I’d go when the creative juices had gone AWOL, to mainline on Victorian plaster casts, Japanese porcelain and Chippendale cabinets. Up I’d go to the Silver Galleries where I could breathe in the shiny collection laid out before me – anything from a glittering Portuguese Catholic reliquary to a hearty Swedish beer tankard, from an 18th century English baby’s rattle to a 17th century Dutch silver-mounted coconut – medicine for the soul! I would never have imagined that one day my own work would be part of the collection.
In 2015, the V&A purchased Devil’s Trumpet, a large bouquet made from cutlery that they first viewed at my exhibition, Pop Goes the Weasel. It was a sweet moment. Even more so when it was placed in the Silver Galleries, nestled amongst the silver artefacts I used to sit and draw many moons before.
Devil’s Trumpet is a modern day memento mori (Latin for “remember you will die”). It was inspired by Dutch still lifes of the 16th and 17th century, where the pictures teemed with precious objects, such as a pocket watch, a pewter mug, and a vase of flowers, testifying to the pleasures of life and the flow of time. I constructed the flowers from silver-plated spoons, pewter tankards, silver vases and plates – the contents of a 16th century Dutch still life reassembled in another dimension and time.
Devil’s Trumpet is named after a psychotropic flower from the Amazon with trumpet-like petals which features throughout the bouquet. If swallowed, the plant is said to create an inability to differentiate fantasy from reality.
Devil’s Trumpet is on permanent display in the Silver Galleries, Victoria & Albert Museum.
V&A Museum Magazine – Devil’s Trumpet
Bouquets featuring Devil’s Trumpet
