The Archivist Next Door

An archivist lives next door: My mother-in-law. She doesn't work in archives but she has been gathering letters, photographs, papers, receipts, even the first saucer she cooked baby rice in for my husband. Her apartment is a repository for stored memories. She has never cared a fig about their evidentiary value. Her documents are precious, though. She has neither taken extra care to keep them safe nor had a disaster prevention planning. Besides exposure to light or moisture, mice, fire, and flooding, her apartment with all those documents went through a devastating war between 1992 and 1995. Nevertheless, she could preserve all that she had collected. When I first came to Sarajevo, she rummaged a dusty drawer and gave me some pieces of white lace that Bosnian ladies used to pin on their dresses in wedding parties – an earlier version of corsages.

                           

Well, here is the latest item from my personal web archives – my blog. I found this dry (dead) branch during a joyful bike ride. I cut the ends and trimmed nodes. After painting it all white, I glued artificial flowers which I have been keeping since my engagement ceremony. The pieces of white lace are my mother-in-law's contribution. I preferred hand-made paper for the lantern with metal construction I made myself. 

Check it out! They have established great success in many European countries but remained little-known in their native Britain.