by Brittany Bland

The sight of it stopped me in my tracks. I had caught a glimpse of it while heading up to the stairs to the Theater exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I entered the Roman Casting section of the Museum. Among many other marvelous creations stood two large pillars stretching to the ceiling of the building. They had to be 100 feet tall each. Figures of Roman soldiers spelling out tales of battles long past, glory, and immortality were carved into the columns. They spiraled around it covering the surface completely. I literally asked a museum attendant, "What is this?" She smiled and directed me towards a poster who explained it all.

The two columns are actually one column. What I was seeing was a recreation of a Roman pillar. The covered the surfaces with plaster and made casts of it in pieces. They then shipped them to the museum and fixed it to a column made of brick in the museum. The two pieces I was seeing if stacked together would be the actual size of the column. The size of it, skill, effort, time, care, and mastery shown in this column brought out a strange emotion. I felt a lump in my throat and then tears. I was crying.