Connection

Thank you, yes I’m ready. Is this thing on? Testing, testing. Ha-ha, I bet no-one has ever done that before!

Sorry, I’m a bit nervous.

So, the gloves. As you can see, I have a lot of them.

When did it start? Oh, when I was little. I found a glove; it was a ladies one, so sweet and soft. Lovely expensive grey suede.

What did I do with it? Well, I put it in the special box that had all my treasures and when I needed to I would get them out and organise them. Over time, the glove was the only thing that helped.

How? Well, I would smooth it against my skin, and imagine the kind lady who had worn it. Her tiny ladylike fingers, pressed into the material. Maybe she held the hand of her daughter. Or her son. I imagined all that.

Well, yes, it didn’t stop there, obviously. Eventually it got so that I needed more things and, somehow I knew they had to be gloves.

Where do I get them? Oh, I find them, or they find me. Sometimes single ones, lost in the street or on buses.

I can afford to buy special ones now, too. I love those ones. Just up there. No, next to those, the red brocade ones. Have you got them in shot? Apparently they were owned by a lady in the court of Queen Elizabeth the First. Imagine.

Connection

What do you mean? It’s obvious isn’t it? Imagine the fingers of a lady, alive hundreds of years ago, pressed into that tiny flimsy scrap. Something of her will still be in there; some essence – maybe – of the Queen might still be clinging to the very tip of that lacy finger there.

These blue ones? I wear them all the time when I’m not working with the collection.

You’re right; I don’t treat them like they are in a museum. I like to be able to feel them, that’s how I get the story.

No, please don’t touch them that would make me very uncomfortable, sorry.

I don’t think it’s that weird, is it? Plenty of people collect things. Stamps, for example. That’s weird; people have left their saliva on them.

Okay, you have enough now? Hopefully you won’t make me look like a complete weirdo. Ha-ha.

Yes, that’s the original one, on the table there. Don’t pass it to me, I’ll get it myself.