Traveling Shrines - Child Bride

Susan Hazard

Child Bride   2009

Recycled wedding dress, vintage perambulator, metal, pots and pans, silk flowers, silk mastectomy forms, netting, ribbon, used drapery swag, kosher salt, safety pins, paint.

 

Child Bride– Detail

 

CHILD BRIDE

 

CHILD BRIDE, or Tinker Bride as I affectionately call her, is representative of a child becoming a woman in the secretive world of the Irish travelers. I cannot term her a “Tinker” because it is now politically incorrect to call the Traveling People “tinkers.” The word “tinker” has fallen into disuse, or is used in a derogative sense, as an insult. The Irish once used the word to identify gypsies, the unsettled wanderers that made their living from repairing precious metal cooking implements for the settled people. The word “tinker” in the dictionary originated from the Middle English word tinkere, dating from the 14^th century, meaning an unskillful mender, or a bungler. Tinker was descriptive of the sound of the metal pots being “tinkered”, or hammered into repair. The Traveling People, or tinkers, are not the Romany gypsies, originally from Romania. The Tinkers, or Traveling people, are a group unto themselves. Their social mores do not always reflect the current lawful or societal laws of most of Irish society, including early marriages.

 

The Travelers, or Tinkers, belong to strictly defined social groups, or “families.” The poorest live in caravans, or trailers, by the side of the road. The caravans are moved to new locations as needed, usually at night, usually by Hi-Ace vans. The “settled” Tinkers live in government provided halting spots, caravan parks, or in sponsored housing. The richest are living in grand houses, surrounded by high walls, security cameras and own land. Their shining, expensive caravans with dingle-ball trim in the windows are parked next to the garage, waiting for the annual summer holiday and get-together with other members of the clan to keep their standing valid. The gatherings may be in Ireland or Great Britain. When a young Traveling woman reaches puberty she is married. If she is not “settled” (living in a government provided house or her families enclave) she is provided her own caravan, and it belongs to her, to raise her children.

 

In the past, older black garbed Tinker women pushed rickety yet serviceable perambulators filled with miscellaneous wares, throatily singing out calls for buyers on Dublin’s crowded Henry Street.  The women used the old black baby buggies to transport sheets of wrapping paper, small bouquets of flowers, small packs of cigarettes, and newspapers. The stock was under the flat wood top used for display, stowed safely in the easily transportable buggy,.

 

All these images and experiences have coalesced into the Child Bride. The bride is made of salt – a figure frozen at near puberty  – just as Lot’s Wife was frozen, yearning to return to a more innocent time. The Child Bride has no identity, no name – just as Lot’s wife had no name. The bride is armless, with no ability to grasp her own fate. She stands in the perambulator, indicative of the babies to come, and perhaps her future fate of hawking wares in the streets of Dublin. The perambulator is also symbolic of her traveling life – from halting spot to roadside camping. The pots and pans are beaten and in need of mending, as are the decorations of the traveling shrine – shopworn, travel weary, tawdry, in need of change. The poignant artificial breasts whip-stitched to her dress are symbolic of her youth – a premature entry into adulthood. She is blindly and passively moved forward to her future life, a continuing celebration of tradition and economic role of women in the society of the Traveling People.

 

 

Child Bride– Detail

 

Child Bride– Detail