The Giant

For Swarovski's 100th anniversary in 1995, artist Andre Heller was tasked with creating a world of wonder.  Something that had never been seen before.  Something that would astound.  What he came up with was the Giant and his chamber of wonders.  It is loosely based on the attempt that the Ambras castle made in the 16th century to collect all of the knowledge known to the world at the time in its own house of wonders. Today, the 16 chambers housed within the Giant's head, created and designed by internationally renowned artists, each interprets crystal in their own unique way.  Intrigued, we had to enter and spend an hour or two discovering what that meant...

The obligatory picture in front of the Giant.

Chamber 1 - The Blue Hall.  Painted to suggest the inside of a cave; this small hall houses the Crystal Bearing Nana...

The largest hand cut crystal in the world at 310,000 carats...

and the mythical horse of Maharaja Pratap in full tack and studded with crystal...

Chamber 2 - Mechanical Theatre.  And this is where they started to lose me.  I love art and theatre...but sometimes the abstract can get really, really abstract.  And for me this was just too much.  The mannequin in the center (that split into pieces and then came back together) was surrounded by dancing shirts, bodyless legs doing a jig and a twisitng turning table with lovers holding hands.  All in almost complete darkenss.  Again - I am not sure I was getting what Jim Whiting was trying to say with his fashion piece on the relationship between men and women.  Watch the video and see if you can explain it to me...

Walking woman.

The dancing legs.

Chamber 3 - 590 mirrors that create a ball of wonder.  Step inside and hear the music of Brian Eno and your own voice magnified by 100 fold.  And see your image reproduced on all the mirrors to infinity.

Chambers 4-7 were just too dark or abstract to really take any pictures of.  And perhaps I just didn't get their significance.  But then I wandered into Chamber 8 - Transparent Opacity and saw this...

and that I understood.  Relaxation.

Chamber 9 - Studio Job Wunderkammer.  The actual Chamber of Wonder.  Back in time, Chambers of Wonder were small cabinets that held trinkets and scientific exhibits.  They showed an entire experience in a small space.  The room is the only one with no corners.  And what looks like a fairground is actually hundreds of short stories put together in one space...

Through the aria being sung in Chamber 10, we entered into the crystal maze of #11 (Eden) - evoking a forest, the maze takes you through a long hall that, with its mirrored walls, seems to go on forever in each direction...

And once again the rooms became very dark and a bit too abstract for me so we sauntered through them quickly and ended up in what would have to be my favorite, and also final, room - Timeless.  And this one needed no explanation as it held the objects Swarovski is most known for - its creations for the stage, screen and runway and individual sale.

One of the original slippers made for the 2015 movie Cinderella.

The Ruby red slippers made for the 70th Anniversary of the Wizard of Oz.

Deposited into the shop, we navigated all of the girls (that included N and I) out without any damage to our pocketbooks.  The sun was shining brightly and we were all getting a bit hungry so we stopped for lunch al fresco before heading into the playground that is the rest of the grounds.