I made a compass, and it wasn't enough for me.
A compass is honest, but it is small. It tells you where north is and more or less leaves you there. It sat on my table for a few days and I kept coming back to the same question: what if the earth isn't enough for me?
That is how I arrived at the armillary sphere. It is the instrument the Renaissance used to try to understand the sky. Ring upon ring, each with its own purpose, all of them turning around a small world scored with meridians. They would turn it with one finger and listen. I like that thought, that someone believed the mechanics of the universe would fit in the palm of a hand, and then set about building the object to prove it.
I drew it line by line. Then I set it into the leather with my own technique, a play of temperature and pressure. Nothing is laid on top. The drawing goes into the hide and stays there.
Around the sphere I put a Cretan labyrinth. I want to tell you something about it, because it is not the labyrinth you are thinking of. It has no dead ends. No traps. It has one road, and that road leads to the centre no matter what you do. You cannot get lost in it. You can only stop walking.
That is why I chose it. It seems to me the kindest thing you can say to someone: only that you do not stop.
Around the rim it reads CENTRUM COSMOS LABYRINTHUS. The centre, the cosmos, the labyrinth. To me they are the same place, because the end point of the journey is not somewhere far away. It is the middle of your own being. You cross the whole cosmos to arrive exactly where you set out from, except that this time you know what is there.
The foil is black and it behaves beautifully with light. Caught straight on, it is a thick black, like fresh ink. Move the bag and it thins, turns grey, withdraws into the yellow of the leather. You will not see it the same way twice, and that is the thing I love most about it.
Inside I lined it with lamb leather, mustard yellow as well. It is soft and warm. After all the labour on the outside, the inside is an oasis of quiet. From the outside you see nothing of it. Only you feel it, when you reach in.
It closes with a neodymium magnet, no buckle, no effort. The strap is fixed, with a 60 cm drop, just long enough to sit where it should.
One day I will carry this drawing onto other hides, because it has gathered too much searching in it to stay only here. The colour, no. This mustard yellow with the black that fades into grey ends with this bag.
Stop asking permission to be great. Walk in and take your place. You are not here just to survive. You are here to conquer. You have everything inside you.
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Dimensions: 23 cm long x 9.5 cm wide x 19 cm high
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Strap: fixed, not adjustable, 60 cm drop
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Lining: lamb leather, mustard yellow
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Closure: neodymium magnet
Cut, stitched and finished by Alexandra, in Arad.
