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| Agnes Richter's Jacket |
In a Victorian-era German asylum, seamstress Agnes Richter painstakingly stitched a mysterious autobiographical text into every inch of the jacket she created from her institutional uniform.
- gailhornstein.com
Throughout my life I have been fascinated by objects which have survived past the time in which they were created. I feel as if these articles can in some way take us back through their histories and reveal something of their owners and the society that shaped them. I like to collect items which hold a special significance to me and one of these is a pair of tiny gloves given to my by my husband shortly after we first met. These are very special articles to me because of the inscription from 1935 written on the faded envelope containing the gloves - 'A mitten of mothers your grandma that she wore when young in England many years ago approximately (1840)'. This link to the history of the gloves is quite touching and when I tried them on they were far too small for my hands. Grandma must have been a petite lady when she first donned them and their sentimental value to her daughter is apparent. I feel honored to posses such a special piece of this families history. Like the gloves and their envelope, Agnes Richter's jacket provides a window into another life, it is an object left behind that speaks of her life and is lovingly cared for to preserve her story.
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| A Mitten of Mothers |
