I’ve realised that objects hold massive importance to me…I wanted to think about why, and also what significance other people put onto their own objects…
The table is the foundation of my domestic life…but that stems from pure practicality rather than any romance.
The table is the perfect size for me to spread out my work and completely mess up, and it’s also the perfect size for my son and I to eat at…
I wanted to find some images of it’s early life here, and I was so happy to find a picture of my late father sitting at the table mending things, and in the position the table originally held; the centre of the room! I also love how it just peeps into other photos of our life when my son was small…
…comparing it’s surface now to then, it looks a lot lighter to me which may have something to do with it’s position in front of the window now…
But then those pictures got me thinking about other people’s tables…
This is my Mum’s table peeping into to the photo ( I’m the devil, my best friend is the mummy! ) which she still has and uses daily…
But I wanted to think about other people’s tables too…this is my partner’s table…
Some people feel strongly about other objects, and I was fascinated to ask people what ’thing’ was important to them and which they thought represented something of who they are and what their life is…I wanted to imagine how it would translate into their own life band…
This week I visited Susan Bell …
She said it had been quite difficult thinking about what object represented something of her life as she’d spent her childhood moving around a lot; objects didn’t seem to hold such importance…
…yet in her fireplace there was a box with a small feather; the feather of her chicken who had been recently stolen by a fox…
There was a lot of love for this caravan…and then Susan’s family moved to Japan when she was still quite young, and the caravan was sold…
It was parked a few minutes away because it’s not roadworthy at the moment, so we walked down the road to meet Dolly…
…and Dolly was the life object!
Having spent so many years travelling around, and now having lived in one place for quite a while, it was obvious that ‘Dolly’ was part of Susan’s family, and a strong part of her self…
The photos below are portraits of Dolly’s details…
Ironically I had once had a ‘Dolly’ too, a 2CV, my first car; and yesterday I kind of missed her…
What I love about the whole concept of a life band is that you can create something so unique to your life; working with the details of something which you may not instantly acknowledge is so important…something which will remind you that life isn’t always pretty, but whose marks and scars, in time, constitute its true beauty…
To have a look at the wonderful work Rhodes Weddings create, particularly their life bands, please take a look here as you could order your own very special piece
You can see the Steller Story version here