Swedenborg House, the 18th century home of the Emanuel Swedenborg archive, is a house full of mysterious objects. 
More than one hundred years ago this house in Bloomsbury, London became home to all things related to the 18th century polymath, including, amongst other things, his walking stick, a tiny piece of his earbone, a puzzling skull and a piece of blotting paper used when he was writing his Book of Dreams, using a feather quill and pot of ink.
But what did the house signify to its visitors? Last week, at my most recent workshop event there, I supplied a cut-out-and-fold simplified paper facade of the Bloomsbury house. Participants, aged between two and seventy years old, did the rest … filling their paper houses with drawn/written impressions and ideas. Iron Man made a surprise appearance.
The fragment of Swedenborg’s ear was mysteriously absent that afternoon, but we could look at a model of an ear and use that for inspiration. When not drawing and cutting out, it was possible to listen to intriguing whispers coming from a cupboard, using an ancient hearing trumpet, similar to one Swedenborg had invented.
