The (Paper) Craft: Ghost Objects at Leighton House
Some ghosts do not rattle chains—they rustle. At Leighton House, they stir quietly, not in the shadows but in plain sight, taking shape in white paper. During the museum’s centenary year, an unusual homecoming has taken place. Ghost Objects: Summoning Leighton’s Lost Collection follows a single question: what happens to the things we lose, and can they ever return?
When Frederic Lord Leighton died in 1896, the treasured objects that once filled his studio and home began to scatter. Some slipped into private collections, others vanished without trace into auction rooms. A century later, Dutch paper artist Annemarieke Kloosterhof has been invited to bring four of these missing objects back through a kind of summoning. One that draws from memory, patience and craft.
Annemarieke Kloosterhof at Leighton House ©RBKC. Image Jaron James copy
They return now not as replicas, but as apparitions: life-sized sculptures crafted entirely from white paper. Through layering, embossing and thousands of hand-cut fragments, Kloosterhof transforms a fragile material into something that holds remarkable presence. Each piece feels suspended between worlds—precise in form, yet dream-like, as if time has thinned and allowed the past to reappear...
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Image Credits:
Lead: Tabernacle, recreated by artist Annemarieke Kloosterhof for Ghost Objects at Leighton House ©RBKC. Image Jaron James
All further images as credited in photo captions.