What a week! Suddenly everything is starting to come together which is exhilarating – the adrenalin rush of careering from one meeting to the next, pitching ideas one minute and listening to pitches the next is intoxicating. At the back of my mind I know there will be this terrible crash once the exhibition opens – when the baby is delivered, the flowers received (hopefully) and the visitors have come and gone. Everyone knows that exhibition blues happen around about a year before the show opens and inevitably once it has closed – you need to start preparing yourself for the come down.
But that is all in the future – we spent this week pouring over the detailed design drawings, our last opportunity to contribute feedback before the design goes to tender. We were frantically ‘mocking’ up layouts for cases, substituting boxes of teabags in place of precious 17th century caskets, tangerines for exquisite 18th century pin cushions. Thank goodness we all grew up watching Blue Peter!
Meanwhile my office is in a state of chaos – as the deadlines for two journal articles approached I threw myself into writing with a vengeance. Papers are scattered across every surface; negotiating a path through the piles of books and drafts from the desk to the door has become a health and safety issue. There are numerous unanswered emails which are crying out for attention and I desperately need to book an appointment to get my eyes tested. I’ve resorted to bad habits – grabbing a bag of crisps on the run and stocking the fridge with chocolate, with numerous cups of tea to sustain me through the long hours sat in front of the computer. Just when I start to despair the colour proofs for the book arrive on my desk – the months of writing and editing, of sourcing and finding exactly the right image to illustrate the text, the hours of proof reading and cross checking have finally come to fruition. Forget tidying my office, this weekend I’m going to read Quilts 1700-2010 – one last indulgence before this particular baby leaves home and goes out into the big wide world.
You can pre-order your copy of Quilts 1700-2010 via the V&A website see http://www.vandashop.com
