Handling the fragile unknown

 

During this residency I have looked for experiences that would somehow replicate those of surgery for me. On previous posts I have spoken about gardening and poached eggs and the parallel experiences that these gave me but recently I gained more insight into a particular mindset for handling fragile and unpredictable objects.

  At the  Victoria and Albert Museum in London there is the Bromley Hall Pattern Book a huge old book from 1770 containing fabric designs. It is in a very fragile condition both in its construction and contents and has very restrictive handling requirements. I went to visit this book and found a remarkable parallel. The book itself is approximately 34x40 inches in size and 5inches deep when open and it fills your arms. I was instructed in handling the pages and how to slowly turn them; one at a time and with consideration to their movement and that of the designs glued (or unglued) to the surface. Resting on a giant supportive bean bag the spine had to be carefully monitored as the pages were turned and then assessed every few pages to decide if the book needed to be readjusted. It took time. 

  I had to listen to the spine as the pages rolled over and decipher sometimes whether it made a good sound or a bad one. It was hard to resist turning them quickly as each page, whether I cared for its contents or not, had to be handled with equal care.

  The most unusual thing was realising that I knew what to do. I found that shifting my whole body weight from one foot to the other as I turned each leaf assisted the giant pages to safely fall (not that you ever just let go of the page until it 'lands'). It was a dance-like fluid motion that supported my arms without them moving.

   I had to assess the distribution of the beans in the beanbag and understood how to massage and coax it so as to gently support and move the whole book as the weight of pages slowly shifted from one side to the other. My understanding of all this came from somewhere in my previous experience and it seemed to be from a human origin. It was like holding a sleeping baby or perhaps moving an unconscious patient.

 You have to watch and wait with something so fragile and vulnerable. It informed you of what it would do not the other way around. Listening and watching and assessing the potential possibilities but not second guessing it. Any wrong or impatient move could have repercussions.

 Of all the parallels with fragile materials it was the handling of this book that gave me most pause.

Images of the book by kind permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum.