Ella Rose Muse: the story: The Wool Company

Friday, 3 October 2014

The Wool Company

Despite roasting in a studio yesterday along with 5 other models for an exciting shoot involving ghosts, cliffs & scaffolding(!!!) I feel like autumn is considering stopping twiddling its thumbs today and sadly, yet beautifully, hitting us with some cooler air...

To get over this shock (and also because I was, quite frankly, knackered, after non-stop shoots galore plus the horrible news that my doggie suffered heart failure while away; she is now on 3 different medications per day, poor thing (and we are grappling with the trauma - for all parties - of having to shove little tiny pieces of 'make-you-better-I-promise' down her little throat), and she is dealing incredibly well with her gorgeous little heart beating at several million miles an hour to cope with all that's going on in there; seriously, I know it sounds weird, but the X-rays of her tiny little body were adorable!), I decided to take a nap this afternoon and make the most of a recent purchase: welcome The Wool Company's mattress topper.

Wow. My entire bed is anew. Not that there was much wrong with it before; but seriously, I feel like it has new soft, floaty depths!

Gorgeous, afore-mentioned piglet certainly agrees (click to enlarge):

(yes, I have a rose on my pillowcase!)

Anyway, back (more directly) to The Wool Company. I'm delighted to be able to say that I'm their 'face'(/body), having recently shot for the second time around the moors and beaches of Cornwall, and finding their lovely website adorned with pictures of my mug and windswept hair. It's such a huge pleasure to shoot for them and I'm already looking forward to next season's photoshoot. After spending a couple of nights at the family's farmhouse I felt very much at home, and loved chatting to Harry and Sarah in the evening about music and life as much as snuggling up to the wool capes and cashmere scarves on little bridges and next to lakes. Definitely my cup of tea, that sort of thing! :-)

I obviously had to make the most of the discount I was kindly offered and purchased a few things of my own after the shoot, one of which I'm wearing below (clue; I look particularly happy in it!). I just think it's so nice to own things that feel so beautifully made and of the kind of quality that has you dreaming of autumn/winter nights by the fire...

Some shots and screengrabs:

And in other news, I duck into La Galleria in Picadilly last night after a shoot in London to have a quick look at the painting 'Access to Justice' by Andrew Brady, which I posed for (as Justice herself!). I was pleased to get a text from Andy just beforehand telling me he'd won the 'People's Choice' award! The exhibition, 'Injustice', was run by London Legal Support Trust in association with Arts for Justice and you can see the entries here.

Here's 'Access to Justice':

About the artwork: 'Painted especially for this exhibition, this piece is an allegory for the way in which the disadvantaged in society find it difficult to gain proper access to justice. Justice here is represented by the figure on the right; she is blind, which traditionally represents her impartiality.The bejewelled figure in the centre represents those with money, influence or power; able to gain the ear of Justice while at the same time obstructing the figure on the left, who, with her threadbare blouse represents the disadvantaged. Making cuts to Legal Aid is one of the greatest injustices in our country today.'

Walter De La Mare, 'The Listeners'

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Natasha Khan/Bat for Lashes, 'Horse and I'

Got woken in the night,
by a mystic golden light.
My head soaked in river water.
I had been dressed in a coat of armor. They called
a horse out of the woodland.
"Take her there, through the desert shores."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear.
You're the chosen one, there's no turning back now."

The smell of redwood giants.
The banquet for the shadows.
Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.
Came upon the headdress.
It was gilded, dark and golden.
The children sang.
I was so afraid I took it to my head and prayed.
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."

Mark Doty, 'A Display of Mackerel'

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Kate Clanchy, 'Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell'

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my hand
smells like the feel of an old school desk,
the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scent
my armpits sound a bass note strong
as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharp
as the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,
on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the nape
of my neck, just where you might bend
your head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleet
of tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.

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Friday, 3 October 2014

The Wool Company