Monday, September 26, 2011

I do, I definitely have reliquaries... I live in one. Yesterday was a brass polishing sort of day - my collection isn't always as precisely laid out as that, I move it around a lot. There are shoulder bones from the Thames foreshore, a big seed from Fiji, lots of different stones from lots of different days. I find it funny to lay it out like a museum, it makes them seem important.


I have little boxes from Great Great Great Aunt Nin's house. Inside the one above is a tiny parrot feather and a sequined bunch of grapes from my Nana and two coins, one from Japan and a cent from 1939.


This one has a small bundle of stag hair, two brown feathers, a bee (dead), a pussy willow paw and some pins. The box is very black and very old.


This one has always been around. I put my Nain's pearls, watch and brooch in it. Also there are a few more coins, from Japan and Europe, dated 1951. A tooth (maybe mine, maybe my Mum's, maybe anyone's. Not sure. It is in the box, it goes in the box) and another silver tin that smells of a powder from Japan. The archaeologist I met on Saturday was talking a bit about Saxon jewellery, he said it would quite often be cut up to be divided amongst descendants. I feel a bit of pain about that, I can't imagine doing it and I wonder whether the desire to have a piece of it was more emotional or practical. Probably both. Somewhere partially underneath the Saxon plots he'd found neolithic quernstones, purposely broken. I've heard this referred to before as the ritual 'killing' of objects, which may be laying it on a bit (for something so very old and unknowable), but I can't quite shake the idea.


My kitchen is a bit like yours, the bottom shelf is mine, it's quite orange. I have too much turmeric.

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