A Brand New Season

Brand New Day (Breaking Free)
Photo courtesy of Flickr's Finest

This next season I will entertain you with some fun process-type posts while I continue researching the next jewelry periods. It feels monumental that we are moving out of the dark and into the light in the jewelry periods at the same exact time I'm moving from darkness to light in my personal journey. I can't tell you how happy I am to be on the research trail, hunting for new treasures.

A Brand New Day
Photo courtesy of Shasi Kumar Aansoo

This past week, I have found a gold mine in the Simpson Library in the form of a sweet little book from 1954, Alexandra: Edward VII's Unpredictable Queen. Written by an English woman named E. E. P. Tisdall, this treasure opens on Alexandra's family and their humble beginnings as wards of the King of Denmark and closes with "Her Last Defiance," which I still have yet to read about. Oh, the joy of discovery!

Of course, beginning at the beginning also affords a view of the daunting task I have before me. It will surely take some time to find the angles that will best allow me to open her life up as a model for how a warrior princess like me can become a dignified queen. Together, we will wade through the anecdotes, the facts, and the memorable quotes in hopes that Alexandra will have a thing or two to teach us.

Brand New Day
Photo courtesy of The UpShot

To whet your appetite for what's to come, I leave you with a quote which highlights Alexandra's affinity for fashion from a very young age: "Alix was not really a promising pupil except in deportment--which came to her naturally--in riding, in music, gymnastics and dressmaking. At this last she soon had great skill--a very complicated art in those days--and although her knowledge would one day give her a reputation for wilfulness and obstinancy among 'by appointment' houses, the result was that she always displayed herself to the best advantage." (Tisdall, p. 14)