Weevils

After weeks of trying to make time, today I got to the current exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion and Design. Having seen some of the work of the pre-Raphaelites and William Morris, I don't really buy into the curators' premise that we all think Victorian Britain was drab and grey (apparently because Queen Victoria wore mourning black for 40 years and because such photography as existed was (mainly) monochrome) but even so, the exhibition told me lots that I didn't know.

Victorians were influenced by the medieval art and architecture they studied and challenged the idea of the Middle Ages being dark and barbaric (all those illuminated manuscripts! all that stained glass!), Ruskin had much to say about colour being God-given, Darwin argued that iridescent feathers and bright flowers exist to encourage procreation, and other scientists explored the colours that make up light thereby upsetting poets and artists of the sunrise, including Ruskin.

There were examples throughout of vibrancy: in painting, in grandiose ceramics made for the 1862 International Exhibition and in textiles dyed with newly discovered and widely manufactured aniline dyes whose affordability meant that bright clothing was worn by very many more people. And in jewellery. A lot of the artefacts on display had me agape but I really didn't expect the (most definitely unaffordable) necklaces made of animals - one with hummingbird heads, their beaks covered in gold leaf and eyes replaced with gemstones, then this tiara and necklace made of 46 iridescent weevils from Brazil.