The Crown and The Prostitute’s Church 7/10

What a curious title, you might be thinking, but it relates to two of the most memorable moments of the day. We started the day at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where we got a tour of the most extensive Art and Design collection in the world, which was started 150 years ago. They have over one million items, and serve around 30,000 patrons every year. Patrons have to request items they wish to view, because, like the British Museum, the collection is stored by size. There’s also a librarian dedicated to the special collections, whose amazing title is the “Invigilator of Special Collections.” I just kept picturing Colin Salmon’s character in Exam.

The V&A wasn’t built to house a library, so protecting and housing the collection has its difficulties. Most of the building isn’t air conditioned, for example, so fans are used to try to keep the temperature controlled, and humidity is monitored, in case it grows dangerous for the collection. To protect the older books, the V & A requires readers to use book cushions, to keep the weight off the book’s spine. However, the rooms were designed to use electricity, rather than gas lighting, to protect the collection.

 

The library staff is focused on the preservation of the collection. They have a budget for the conservation of about 30 books per year, and those books are usually ones that are going to be used in displays. The collection budget is almost doubled by donations, and 43% of the collection is in foreign languages.

To cap our visit to the V&A, we were allowed to see some of the more impressive items in the library collection. Not only were we show these items, we were able to handle them, which was amazing. I turned the pages of an illuminated book of hours from around 1400, leafed through a ₤20,000 replica of Da Vinci’s Codex, and even read some of the David Copperfield manuscript, written by Charles Dickens. You could turn through the pages, and see where he’d decided to add sentences, and scribbled them on the back. That was pretty amazing, and I’m so grateful to the V&A for allowing us that experience.

 

I decided to stick around at the V&A for a while, to look at the Stained Glass and Silver collections (because y’all know how I am about things that are shiny). There were some really cool silver pieces, although some of the religious pieces looked like gravy boats. Then, we came to the jewelry collection. And if I’m a fan of shiny things, sparkly things are my kryptonite.

The first thing that immediately caught my eye as I walked into the collection was this GORGEOUS sparkly diamond crown. It was actually elevated in a glass case, so I asked if Kate would take my picture standing behind the case, so it looked like I was wearing what I had deemed, “My crown.” Unfortunately, we were stopped by a curator, because pictures weren’t allowed… as though they could damage the stones, or something. We walked through the ewelry collection and it was really amazing and sparkly. Christine noted that the style of necklaces from around 700AD, silver and gold circles, would blend right in at a Claire’s today. Apparently the 700s are back, my friends.

That evening, a couple of my classmates and I went on a Jack the Ripper walk, which was fantastic! We went to various sites, and heard the gruesome murders described in grisly detail. Our tour guide was full of interesting tidbits. Like the fourth woman who was murdered? She was released from prison only about an hour before her death. She’d been jailed for being drunk and disorderly, running around and impersonating a fire truck. Yeah.

The place she was running around, and the area where Jack got her, was the location of a church our tour guide said was once known as “Prostitute’s Church.” “Oh,” I thought, “They must have been a place where prostitutes could get alms, etc.” Nope! It was called Prostitute’s Church, because it was a place where prostitutes would go to pick up men. So that’s a fun fact for you! The tour was really great, but it left me uneasy that night before I fell asleep.

We were hungry went we got back to Waterloo Station, and the line for the burrito place was outrageous, so we grabbed some McDonalds. I tried to order a double cheeseburger with one slice of cheese (aka, McDouble), and it was like I blew their minds. The girl working the counter just did not get it. Did I want extra cheese? No. She finally grabbed someone from the kitchen to come to the counter and talk to me, to understand what I wanted, and then looked at him and said, “Can you make that?” Seriously. Eventually, they figured it out, and we got our food and left, but it was kind of a hilarious encounter. Still, a funny way to end the night, considering the creepy tour we’d just been on.