Victoria A Return to Loveliness

Gentle Lessons

Over the years, the Editors of Victoria Magazine have captured the many facets of the beauty of and the celebration of woman. The magazine became like a prism held up to the light to shine in rainbow hued colors the many and complicated sides to womanhood.

this little teacup and saucer are new finds Micasa - Petit Point

I appreciate these thoughts and reminders over the years – the treasuring of appreciating the precious things in life.

I am particularly drawn to an article today in the 1993 May issue of Victoria – an issue specifically dedicated to ‘the feminine touch’.

A photographic contributor to Victoria Magazine and author, Starr Ockenga was shared in her book, ‘On Women and Friendship’ –

 a look at Victorian Women who paid tribute in the loving ties they shared in things such as through beautiful paintings and bookmarks embroidered, ‘forget me not’.

A collector  of albums, needlework, paintings and poems of the Victorian era, Starr offered a look at those keepsakes in  – which illuminated the friendship of those Victorian women’s lives so many years ago.

Starr was drawn to friendship albums filled with words and sketches shared between Victorian women , ‘I read the words from the past, from a way of life with a different pace, words from one woman to another about the meaning and importance of friendship. The women wrote of friendship as the staple of their life’.

I was blessed to find one such album at an Estate sale several years back

Starr collected volumes of albums and emphemera revealing sentiments shared by Victorian women – she ‘found a thread that unted this ephemera: They all represent facets of women’s regard for one another, expressing what she calls ‘a gentle but strong communion’.

I find, that through modern technology – we have continued in our own way this gentle lesson of connecting – to celebrate the art and the beauty of womanhood – to relate as Kindred Spirits –

I am thankful to Starr for pursuing this collection – for sharing these women’s thoughts and sentiments. I plan to take a moment or two with my daughters – to teach them the beauty and the wonder of cultivating friendship with like-minded women – 

to honor and to cherish one another – perhaps they too can find friendships in the words left by these Victorian women as Starr described, ‘tender document of connections and feelings, as delicate and fragile as their braided hair wreaths’.