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instagram | photos are my own, reblogs fine, do not repost/reuse

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Common Emerald Moth

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“Whenever I smell a flower—my heart tells me each time that a memory of something extremely beautiful and precious is connected to the fragrance, something that had been mine long ago and became lost. It’s also the same with music, and sometimes with poems—all of a sudden something flashes, just for a moment, as if all at once I saw my lost home below in a valley, and then it immediately disappears and is forgotten.”

— Hermann Hesse, from “Iris”, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse (trans. Jack Zipes)

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You have a life- just imagine that!

You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe

still another…

Poem by Mary Oliver

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It has already gone way too far...

Webtoon + Instagram + Patreon

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After looking up where this gorgeous box of New Kingdom linen from 3 500 years ago is held, I read further in the MET's online collection of these linens, and it's fascinating so I decided to share it with you. Apparently earliest known Egyptian funerary texts list linen cloth among important offerings for burials. Fabric was very expensive and viewed as an asset. Fine linens were increadibly expensive, so it's no wonder tombs of kings and queens would include boxes of fine linens as treasures for the royal's after-life journey.

And the linens the Egyptians produce were absolutely amazing. This linen from a chest in the tomb of Hatnefer and Ramose is mindblowing.

It's incredibly sheer, made from extremely fine thread and woven densely, which must have required expert skill and huge amount of labour. It's roughly 5 meters long and 1,6 meters wide, so it's absolutely massive, making it even more mind boggling how much work has gone to it. From the MET collection listing:

This sheet was woven of superfine thread that must have been spun from flax harvested when the plants were very young. The length of cloth would have taken months of constant industry to weave. [...] This cloth must be that described by the Egyptians as "royal linen," the highest quality. The sheerness of the featherweight fabric and its silken softness lend credence to New Kingdom representations of elaborately pleated garments that allow the contours of the body and even the color of the skin to show through. The cloth was repaired and laundered in ancient times.

It's fascinating, I didn't know you could get extremely fine thread by harvesting linen very young! This type of extremely fine linen simply is not made today and probably requires skills that are long lost. And it's incredible that it has survived more than 3 500 years after being used. The text of the MET listing implies that it was used as a clothing. The measurements of the cloth do lend itself for draping an elaborate pleated dress. It would have look likely something like this.

Here's a modern interpretation on how this kind of long cloth in roughly these dimensions would have been draped.

Another incredible thing I found in the MET collection was this piece of linen.

It's not nearly as impressive as a textile as the royal linen, but this small (25.5 x 17.5 cm) folded piece of linen was found from a mass grave of soldiers from ca. 1961–1917 BC. That was almost 4 000 years ago. A 4 000 year old fabric. That is insane. Imagine the hands of a weaver weaving these specific threads into this specific fabric 4 000 years ago. Imagine touching the same threads a regular unknown weaver touched 4 000 year ago.

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9dcc x julius margulies ‘aballe’ watch band

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El Jadida - Cisterne Portugaise, 16th Century

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“Life is what happens to you while you´re busy making other plans.”

— Allen Saunders

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“Whatever comes, let it come. What stays, let it stay. What goes, let it go.”

— Unknown

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Ring details from ‘Portrait of a Noble Woman’ by Nicolas Neufchatel, c. 1567.

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loved this ever since i first saw it

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sasha pivovarova by mert alas & marcus piggott for vogue france october 2011