London: Aug 7: V&A Museum Part 1

On Friday, August 7, 2009, I disappeared from work to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum. I saw about half of it; here are the pictures I took, along with captions I wrote 6+ months after the fact. (I originally wrote captions on the same day, but lost my copy of those.)

The museum is hard to place. I guess I have to say that it covers applied art from all eras and cultures. It includes ceramics and metalworks (serving dishes and the like), rugs, fashion (dresses, etc.), furniture (cabinets, chairs, etc.), lamps, and wall decorations (tapestries, paintings, etc.). The British section even has multiple period-rooms on display, transplanted to the museum from old houses elsewhere in London.

The museum also has a strong emphasis on sculpture (South Asian, Asian, Western, etc.). Indeed, the "cast court" is definitely the best section I visited. It's incredible. I have no problem with the fact that the casts aren't original. So what that they're copies--the pieces that they're copying are extraordinary.

I also visited a special exhibit that showcased furniture and that felt like a haunted castle. Everything was a warped or a strange combination of real objects, such as a bathtub that looks like a boat, a teapot than looks like an animal's skull, and a seemingly-melted wooden wardrobe. Weird.