Fifty-three years ago, these little butterflies were carefully collected, and their identifying labels were completed in tiny, meticulous handwriting.
A few weeks ago, I found them, dusty and broken in a glass jar in a Greyabbey antique shop. The writing is so small that I couldn't read it until I'd taken photographs of the little collection. On my laptop screen, the name of the writer was clear, and it rang a bell.
I texted my parents, who immediately remembered Gwyneth Gotto, my mum's inspirational biology teacher at Methody, and her husband Viv, zoology lecturer at Queen's and a world-class tennis player.
Viv's career was impressive and is well documented, but it was Gwyneth who interested me more.
Gwyneth was the sort of teacher that all of us in education would aspire to be - hugely enthusiastic, unconventional in her practical trousers, pushing her students to question and challenge accepted ideas, encouraging the strengths of every individual. She loved her subject so much that she spent her 1947 honeymoon running a holiday field course at the marine biology centre in Portaferry. But most of all she loved to communicate her enthusiasm for biology to each pupil she taught.
More than sixty years later, my mum can remember specific things Mrs Gotto said to her, word for word, encouraging, knowledgeable and humorous.
A legacy as excellent as this little collection is touching. Something to aim for.
In the restored nursery at Mount Stewart, I find a beautiful, frightening collection of old toys.
I think immediately of "the time my doll died"... My mum told me that my doll had perished and she had put it in the big dark chest of drawers in her bedroom. I knew that perished meant died. I didn't know it was also something that happened to rubber toys in the 1970s. I was devastated, and afraid to go into that room, in case I saw the dead doll, for a long time.
And I think of this poem by Eavan Boland. I love the way her poetry treats "objects", which are often domestic details like the ones I'm drawn to photograph, and her hints about what has been disregarded, disguised, suppressed, but may be clearly seen when you know how to look. Past and present, innocence and loss of innocence, forgetting and remembering...
The Dolls Museum in Dublin
The wounds are terrible. The paint is old.
The cracks along the lips and on the cheeks
cannot be fixed. The cotton lawn is soiled.
The arms are ivory dissolved to wax.
Recall the Quadrille. Hum the waltz.
Promenade on the yacht-club terraces.
Put back the lamps in their copper holders,
the carriage wheels on the cobbled quays.
And recreate Easter in Dublin.
Booted officers. Their mistresses.
Sunlight criss-crossing College Green.
Steam hissing from the flanks of horses.
Here they are. Cradled and cleaned,
held close in the arms of their owners.
Their cold hands clasped by warm hands,
their faces memorized like perfect manners.
The altars are mannerly with linen.
The lilies are whiter than surplices.
The candles are burning and warning:
Rejoice, they whisper. After sacrifice.
Horse-chestnuts hold up their candles.
The Green is vivid with parasols.
Sunlight is pastel and windless.
The bar of the Shelbourne is full.
Laughter and gossip on the terraces.
Rumour and alarm at the barracks.
The Empire is summoning its officers.
The carriages are turning: they are turning back.
Past children walking with governesses,
Looking down, cossetting their dolls,
then looking up as the carriage passes,
the shadow chilling them. Twilight falls.
It is twilight in the dolls' museum. Shadows
remain on the parchment-coloured waists,
are bruises on the stitched cotton clothes,
are hidden in the dimples on the wrists.
The eyes are wide. They cannot address
the helplessness which has lingered in
the airless peace of each glass case:
to have survived. To have been stronger than
a moment. To be the hostages ignorance
takes from time and ornament from destiny. Both.
To be the present of the past. To infer the difference
with a terrible stare. But not feel it. And not know it.
Eavan Boland 1994
I found these roller skates hidden in the corner of my favourite antique shop and loved them immediately. They give off the happy vibes of something that has been used and treasured. There's beauty in their wear and tear.
And the wheels are marked "Tenacity". I never had enough of that to learn to skate properly, either on wheels or on ice. The few times I had a go, I always fell over in the first two minutes and then just tried to hide at the side of the rink or the park or wherever we were instead, attempting, almost certainly in vain, to look cool.
"Those who don't try never look foolish", as Fiyero truthfully/foolishly/wisely says in Stephen Schwartz's Wicked.
In fact, I should have tried a lot harder. Once you get past a certain age (30?), you see that having a go is actually a lot cooler than not trying in case you fail. Skating through life might have been nice.
I've spent some more time this week editing the photographs I took during the summer at Old Car City in Georgia, a place well worth the 35 mosquito bites that were its downside.
This is a collection of colour edits for you - if you'd like to check out some black and white shots, have a look at my previous post from Old Car City.
While we were at this amazing vintage car graveyard, we met a very nice reporter from The Associated Press, and he interviewed me about my thoughts on the location. I'm sorry to say that under such pressure all articulate thought deserted me and I said, "I love old American cars. There are many more cars than I imagined. I love it". This deeply perceptive comment is now reported verbatim all over the internet, since he wrote a very interesting article with great photographs, and lots of news outlets have used it. Excellent.
One of the coolest places I visited during my summer break was Old Car City in White, Georgia. It was very much worth braving my 35 mosquito bites and temperatures far from comfortable for a person from Belfast in order to see the 4,400 gently decaying vintage American cars on the site.
Old Car City is set at the edge of a forest, and one of the most appealing things for me was the way the plants and the cars seemed to have grown and aged together to create such a magical environment. I sometimes identify the main themes in my work as beauty, heritage and decay, and as I've started editing my hundreds of shots from this trip it strikes me how very much all of these interests are being fulfilled here.
I love visiting antique shops while I'm in the States, and last week's prize find was this excellent vintage toy...
I remember my little brothers playing with construction sets similar to this in the 70s - the UK version was Meccano. This one is the Gilbert Erector Set; I'm not sure whether or not the 1927 on the lid is a date or not, but it probably dates back to at least the 1930s. I loved the colours and the instruction booklet, and I was particularly touched to see that there were some little constructions in the box that must have been made by a previous owner.
I used these as inspiration to make some creatures of my own, incorporating the vintage parts into my own Meccano family. Here they are...
Gilbert
Gladys
Jack
Sparky
