Jason Dodge
24 Nov 2010 - 05 Feb 2011
JASON DODGE
24 November, 2010 – 05 February, 2011
The writer grew up in a village in County Wexford, a prosperous and bourgeois part of Ireland. His mother made no secret of the joy she got from her role as housewife and mother of 5 children, who afforded herself the luxury of spending most of her day reading after finishing the household chores in half an hour every morning. The writer grew up surrounded by women. His father, a teacher and historian, was seldom at home. It was his ambition at that time to buy the small manor near the town centre using public money and donations in order to turn it into a museum: he spent his time trying to raise money at assemblies, at the markets, at party functions and dinners for prominent citizens.
Meanwhile, the social life of the children was determined solely by their mother whose sisters, girlfriends, aunts and their daughters all came for visits. They stayed for an afternoon or for several weeks and filled the house with conversations, which were mostly about clothing, about dresses, skirts, coats, pants, scarves, stockings, hats ... and cardigans.
Rarely did anyone finish telling a story without a precise description of the clothes the persons in question were wearing, praising or disparaging their taste, their elegance or at least their ability to dress themselves appropriately. “To do something with little means,” was a constant expression, which meant that imagination and a dignified understanding for quality won out over any extravagances – whereby a good piece of fabric, exceptional edging, or a new cut set the basis for an outfit, a dress or a skirt that, at least at the moment of its inception, created the illusion of perpetuity: simultaneously classic and enduring. The style of the time was neither rustic and traditional (no one knits the traditional old patterns of the fisherman’s jumper anymore) nor really fashionable. What counted was the constant new interpretation of various articles of clothing in varying colours or quality according to the season.
The writer’s grandmother’s taste was recognised to be exceptionally good: as the owner of a small clothing factory, which mainly produced aprons and simple dresses for department stores, she made use of her directress’ ability to translate images from magazines into patterns for sewing. She used her substantial income largely for fabrics, furs and shoes in order to be impeccably well dressed. For her husband, the publisher of the local newspaper, this addiction to splendour was wasteful and when he thought he recognized a new coat, she often claimed to have simply turned an old coat so that the fabric, newly cut, no longer looked frayed and shabby but was like new. “Turned” became a commonly used term. The family often scoffed at the vanity of the stalwartly shopping grandmother, whose theatre shoes she announced to be “just turned,” much like the slim gloves of soft leather, which the grandmother wore at all occasions and whose light colours – crème, yellow, pink, white – in their immaculate purity were certain to also have been merely “turned.” Once the writer as a boy almost tied his own hands into a knot trying to tell this family joke, miming as he talked how the right and the left gloves were turned inside out and then sewn back together.
24 November, 2010 – 05 February, 2011
The writer grew up in a village in County Wexford, a prosperous and bourgeois part of Ireland. His mother made no secret of the joy she got from her role as housewife and mother of 5 children, who afforded herself the luxury of spending most of her day reading after finishing the household chores in half an hour every morning. The writer grew up surrounded by women. His father, a teacher and historian, was seldom at home. It was his ambition at that time to buy the small manor near the town centre using public money and donations in order to turn it into a museum: he spent his time trying to raise money at assemblies, at the markets, at party functions and dinners for prominent citizens.
Meanwhile, the social life of the children was determined solely by their mother whose sisters, girlfriends, aunts and their daughters all came for visits. They stayed for an afternoon or for several weeks and filled the house with conversations, which were mostly about clothing, about dresses, skirts, coats, pants, scarves, stockings, hats ... and cardigans.
Rarely did anyone finish telling a story without a precise description of the clothes the persons in question were wearing, praising or disparaging their taste, their elegance or at least their ability to dress themselves appropriately. “To do something with little means,” was a constant expression, which meant that imagination and a dignified understanding for quality won out over any extravagances – whereby a good piece of fabric, exceptional edging, or a new cut set the basis for an outfit, a dress or a skirt that, at least at the moment of its inception, created the illusion of perpetuity: simultaneously classic and enduring. The style of the time was neither rustic and traditional (no one knits the traditional old patterns of the fisherman’s jumper anymore) nor really fashionable. What counted was the constant new interpretation of various articles of clothing in varying colours or quality according to the season.
The writer’s grandmother’s taste was recognised to be exceptionally good: as the owner of a small clothing factory, which mainly produced aprons and simple dresses for department stores, she made use of her directress’ ability to translate images from magazines into patterns for sewing. She used her substantial income largely for fabrics, furs and shoes in order to be impeccably well dressed. For her husband, the publisher of the local newspaper, this addiction to splendour was wasteful and when he thought he recognized a new coat, she often claimed to have simply turned an old coat so that the fabric, newly cut, no longer looked frayed and shabby but was like new. “Turned” became a commonly used term. The family often scoffed at the vanity of the stalwartly shopping grandmother, whose theatre shoes she announced to be “just turned,” much like the slim gloves of soft leather, which the grandmother wore at all occasions and whose light colours – crème, yellow, pink, white – in their immaculate purity were certain to also have been merely “turned.” Once the writer as a boy almost tied his own hands into a knot trying to tell this family joke, miming as he talked how the right and the left gloves were turned inside out and then sewn back together.