I’m loving learning

Learning about a local embroidery for one of my previous books.

As I research this book I am spending a lot of time searching through museum and library databases and catalogues in search of images and information about my chosen subject. Because I am dealing with another language and also dialects of that language, there is a lot of sleuthing to be done. Once I have used the most common term for what I’m looking for, then I use as many alternative terms as I can find. Things are not always catalogued as I might hope. I guess that has to do with items being catalogued by many different people (speaking/writing in different dialects) over many years, at different museums/libraries. Cataloguing appears to be a more inexact science than I would like.

When you find something, it can feel like a real victory. Over the past weeks I have expected that in one particular region, given the other embroidery that was common there, I would be very likely to find the style of embroidery I am studying on a particular item of clothing. It just seemed to me that it would be logical that they would have used it there. A museum curator had agreed with me that it seemed likely. However, I had looked and looked and found no evidence of it. Until this morning – I FOUND SOME! 🙂

I was looking through a range of images, checking each one, and suddenly, there it was: the embroidery I had been looking for! And it must be a fairly important example, because whereas the other items I had been looking at only had about 3 photos each, this one had 10, with many detail shots, showing exactly the sort of information I wanted to know. The Gymnast actually said to me, “I’ve never seen you get so excited about anything before.”

The other day I was looking at some images and I noticed a little detail in the stitching that I had not seen/noticed before. (Quite possibly I had *seen* it, but not noticed or understood what it meant.) I was so excited! It answered another of my questions that I had. Since that time, I have noticed it on another example, from a different region.

There is so much to be learned. Sometimes I just browse. I choose a wide search term and then just see what I can learn by observation. I’m not looking for anything in particular, just drinking it all in.

By observing, taking notes, looking at locations, dates, materials, motifs, and more, then by looking for patterns in that information, you can learn so much. From what I know, I can make hypotheses about other things, and then go looking for historical evidence to back up my hypotheses. Sometimes I find it, and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes it just sits there, niggling away as a question, until finally I use the right search term and find the evidence.

I am totally enjoying all that I am learning and discovering. What a joy! What a privilege!