(Play the videos Together) -
Original proposal
Poppy Dolls
Mary Eddy
Garden and Garage
Project II proposal
Poppy Dolls
The poppy is a symbol for sleep in many cultures. Opium, an opiate comes from the milky latex like juice found below the plant pods skin. From it morphine, heroin, codeine, and papaverine are derived. Codeine, from the Greek. kodeia “poppy head,” is related to kooz “prison,” lit. “hollow place;” kodon “bell, mouth of a trumpet”.http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=poppy&searchmode=none
To relay the idea of sleep and its vital importance to life contrasted by death, an eternal sleep at the end of one’s life, I am using the form of a doll.
To connect the idea of one’s head as a mental prison, a swollen hollow place, I am using a pre and post blooming poppy pod in place of a head on the doll’s body as a sleep aid, a token taken to sleep.
To show a balance between wake and sleep times I shall construct an upside down doll, with two heads, on opposing sides for the differing times of day. The dolls body would be soft and beanbag like, filled with an abundance of loose poppy seeds.
One head will represent timed in preparation for sleep. Below the head, will reside a music box inside the doll’s torso, activated by twisting the head to wind the box, thus lulling the user to sleep
The other side will represent post sleep and the coming to. The hollow cavern of the pod will by filled with soothing tea herbs. While opium tea is often made by steeping poppy pods for the opious effects, the tea filled pod would symbolize a breaking of the nights fast, and the healthful start of a new day.
the doll is to be gifted to an over worked and sleep deprived individual in need of assistance. upon receiving the poppy doll the person would also be given a small nighttime snack of a poppy seed tea cake. The cake would signify a time when hungry children were prescribed opium to quiet their cries and hunger pains.
A prescription for poppy was to be given to children to stop their crying during the Industrial Revolution. Godfrey`s Cordial was very popular at this time. Men thrown out of work by the chaotic conditions of the infant industries found opium cheaper than food. A few coppers would buy the “cordial” that kept hungry children quiet. And Godfrey`s Cordial was still popular in 1910. It took the pure food and drug laws of a later day to remove this dangerous narcotic from patent medicines. In the sixteen hundreds alarge dollop of opium could be added to anything to bring miraculous relief to the sick and suffering. http://www.sfheart.com/poppy.html
Posted on March 9, 2012
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