Sepia1

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FIRENZE/ FLORENCE IN SEPIA I

SANTA TRINITA' TO SANTA CROCE

Arno River, Santa Trinità, Palazzo Vecchio, Dante's House, Santa Croce,

In the nineteenth century the Mother Foundress of the Community of the Holy Family, Agnes Mason, C.H.F., had visited Florence and bought a great number of sepia photographs, stuffing a dark portfolio full of them. She dreamed of our Community, while sitting in an olive tree in Settignano, as a teaching order for women of girls in England and abroad, educating them to the highest standards, emphasizing beauty. She was then living in Red Lion Square, famous for its Pre-Raphaelite Brethren. Later, her beginning Community purchased a building on Cromwell Road, starting their first school. Sister Lucy Knox, C.H.F., an Earl's daughter, carefully placed these sepia photographs into slots in brown parcel paper, good strong paper with no acid and perfect for their preservation, so that these could be used in teaching. Many of these brown sheets have her name and their address and stamps with the heads of queens and kings, of Victoria and of Edward, and one even has red sealing wax.

Later, Mother Agnes Mason purchased Holmhurst St Mary in Sussex, a large beautiful rambling country house built by Augustus Hare out of the proceeds of his travel books, including one on Florence. He built an Italian Renaissance terrace in front of the house looking out to the Channel, a great room the Sisters called 'Utopia' with William Morris wallpaper and a carved Carrara marble fireplace, its design taken from the carved marble in the painting in Santa Maria Novella shown here, another great room the Sisters called 'Arcadia' filled with carved wood panelling. I went to school here from 1943 to 1953, then returned to be a Sister. But the Bishop wanted our endowment, and we were forced out, first burning many papers, among them - almost - this portfolio.

I organize these sepia photographs, which are on the thinnest paper, partly according to the ordering in Augustus Hare's Florence. I surround them with similar dark brown frames as are the wrapping papers in which they are placed. Usually I remove the corners by cloning, for they cannot be photographed when not in their brown paper slots, but in some cases I leave them untouched. I have made a new portfolio for them bound with Florentine printed paper, using my convent's book-binding press I now have here in Florence, though I have preserved the original tattered one as well. The red numbers correspond to those in the map at Florencemap.