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I have been working on organizing my study, a room that has been taken over by too many books! My study was supposed to be a room for reading and writing, an orderly room where you could find a book if you needed to or locate an article on that writer that you love. The dream was that books would fill the book shelves and files provided with inspiration would fill the cabinets. When we moved to our house ten years ago I unpacked a lot of things from the old house and stored them in those study cabinets, meaning to get to them one day and replace them with files, but somehow never got to it. Ten years have passed and the files have never been made. And books have been piling up all over the place.
A couple of weeks ago I made up my mind to begin this project. I started by going through everything in those cabinet drawers, which included many treasures from the past: articles, magazines, catalogues, stationary, cards, everything I had been collecting over the years. To keep or throw away, that was the question. The goal was to clean out the drawers and make space for the files. Oh the amount of things I threw away! But, there were also many treasures -- one of my favorite discoveries were the postcards and catalogues I have been collecting over the years from our travels and visits to museums, art galleries, and historic houses. I put some of them out on my desk and I loved the collage they made. A friend of mine described them as "eye candy." And she was right. I just love them!
Here are some of my favorites:
Duncan Grant, "At the Ballet" (1938) from The Bloomsbury Workshop in London
This London gallery had an exhibition of works by Vanessa Bell, many years ago
I probably received this invitation in the mail
Vanessa Bell, "Self Portrait" (c.1958) from Charleston in Sussex, England
Catalogue for an exhibition of works by Roger Fry at The Bloomsbury Workshop
Notecard with a drawing of Knole, the ancestral home of Vita Sackville-West in Kent, England
Painting of Lady Ottoline Morrell by Simon Bussy (1920) at the National Portrait Gallery in London
The Bronte sisters, oil painting by Branwell Bronte at the National Portrait Gallery
Bloomsbury Silhouettes, 5 postcards by Anna Fewster, bought at Charleston last year
Snapshots into the past and reminders of travels and interests from many years ago -- these are just some of the souvenirs I have discovered during my adventures in cleaning up my study. It feels a bit like a travel diary. And there is so much more...I had no idea this would be so much fun!