Home, Head and Heart

Photography by Alva

Watch Your Step

Feet.There are many forms of self-portraiture; some pretty straight forward, others quite obscure. As for me, one of the types of self-portraiture I've been unconsciously experimenting with are my feet. I don't have a foot fetish as such. However, I may have a bit of a thing for shoes and I tend to look down a lot when I'm walking. Often, when I remind myself to look up, I tend to trip.

Here is a curious selection of images of the world through my eyes...

18th Century Glass Phial, Hammond Lane Excavations, Dublin City.

It's just incredible that this delicate hand blown glass phial survived deep in the ground under our feet, compressed under almost 300 years of habitation right in the center of Dublin city. It may have contained some medicine of some kind or another. Sealed with a tiny cork, it was probably kept and re-used many times, as recycling occurred in the Post-Medieval world too!

Bottle Selection, Hammond Lane Excavations, Dublin City.

These beautiful bottles were excavated on Hammond Lane in Dublin. After a time in the ground a chemical reaction occurs and the glass changes, developing this wonderful effervescent quality. The larger bottles would probably have been imported containing wine from France. The smaller phial, would've held something more medicinal perhaps. They were all hand blown and date from the 18th Century.