Embroidered weights, 2023

These pavement stones, serendipitously found by Toledo on the side of the street in Portugal, are wrapped in black pongé silk, which she beautifully embroidered with the motifs from the rug, and are her favorite flowers. Inspired by an excerpt from the novel Angle of Repose, it was a catalyst for the weights – “Botanists tell us that the blossom is an evolution of the leaf, but they cannot say just why that particular bud should take from the same air and sunshine a fairer substance, a deeper color, a more permanent existence, and become something at which each passerby pauses, and goes on his way happier for the sight.”