About Caroline
She Owned Them: Toile and Family Tea Set
Physical objects are passed down in families from parent to child, grandparent to grandchild. Many of these items are valued by an individual or family for keeping their heritage or memory alive as time passes and the original owners pass on. We understand ourselves and our family through these objects, the memories they hold, and the physicality of them. Much of my own upbringing was surrounded by ancestry, memory, and our old island along the Georgia coast. My own research and artistic practice revolces around reexamining my own history and that of others. This tea set depicts the complexity of the white antebellum woman through historical cartoons, newspaper illustrations, and sketches that mock her pure ideal; instead, focusing on her vulgarity, intelligence, vanity, violence, and determination to keep her power within her home and community. The designs reference 17th and 18th century Staffordshireware pottery and 19th century toile wallpaper designs. Various plants traditional to the Southern coast of the United States, such as cotton, magnolia, and marsh grasses are present within the designs. Thus allowing the beauty to hide amongst the ugly. The final tea set and toile wallpaper will be installed in various antebellum ruins, marshlands, and coastal regions along the coast of Georgia in order to place the physical material amongst its own history.