Tuesday 16 October 2012

who cares about the microwave and the table



Where do you start in trying to sort through a lifetimes collection. Over the past few weeks this is what we have been trying to do. Making sense of another persons life through the things they have collected throughout their life time and now left behind. From the everyday, mundane, junk to the precious stuff.
Its a bit like what do you take from the fire?
You have a life, how much of another's possessions do you want or need in your world?
Where do you start? 
Well for me it was the places where people put things that they may not want found. In the secret drawers in the ottoman at the bottom of the bed which seemingly looks full of blankets then you look and you find diaries, things they have made and photos.
It turns out most of the things I have kept are the precious things, they  are seemingly the  mundane things but  for me they hold the most meaning as they were the things that had been kept for years, like a beautiful vintage stapler and hole punch they look so beautiful, the tea service used on high days and holidays, your button box, the diaries, the roses dug up from the garden as they hold a very dear and special place, the sewing box all ragged and just as you left it the day you left this life, half sewn things, little bits of lace, threads and scraps of fabric, your little tins of stamps. I didn't give a toss about the table or microwave I left that to the people who care about that stuff, but they miss the details of what makes a person who they are. You look so beautiful in your photo I would love to have known you then!