The Museum of Savage Beauty: Earrings

Museum technician Phil Sofer discusses the challenges of mounting the Shaun Leane porcupine quill earrings for display in Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty Earrings. Irere, Spring/Summer 2003, Shaun Leane for Alexander McQueen http://www.vam.ac.uk/museumofsavagebeauty/ Transcript: My name is Phil Sofer, I work in the Technical Services Department at the V&A. On the McQueen show I’m working on making the object mounts for all of the objects that are going into the cabinet of curiosities. I’ve chosen these porcupine earrings to talk about because they were one of my favourite objects in the cabinet. There’s like a range of accessories and jewellery that we’re mounting on these heads that are a slightly unusual shape and they don’t have discernible features; so they don’t have like ears and nose and features on the head. So the challenge with these objects is to make sure that they’re mounted in the correct position on this head as if there was an ear there. These are designed by Shaun Leane, who worked a lot with Alexander McQueen creating lots of jewellery and amazing pieces, and I was really fortunate to be able to get him to come and meet with us and talk about objects that he’s lending to the exhibition. So I really wanted to talk to him about this piece because I’ve seen photos from when these have been worn on the catwalk and there’s like a hooped section at the ear with the fan of the silver coming out from behind the ear. So I wanted to find out from him which part of