Antiques often teach hard lesson

A collector’s life is full of those uh-oh moments. Things get nicked and broken.

Mistakes happen.

But when they happen to the things we love, things we’ve searched for or something we’ve carefully restored, it really hurts.

Years ago, I found a beautiful antique picture frame, with its original convex glass, at an estate sale. I had been looking for such a frame for a long time.

When I got home, I spread out all my treasures on the floor to admire them and promptly stepped through the glass.

Another time, in a hurry to get a little four-drawer chest down to the space I was renting at an antique mall, I loaded it onto the back of my pick-up truck and took off. When I turned the corner at the end of my street, (I may have been going a little too fast) something caught my eye in the rearview mirror. It was all four drawers sailing over the side of my truck.

Uh-oh.

As a young girl I watched my grandfather replace the curved glass front of an old china cabinet. He had broken it when he opened the door and hit the corner of a little table.

He ordered the new glass and brought it home only to discover it had cracked along the way.

Another trip to the glasscutter’s brought another piece of glass home safely, only to shatter as he inserted it into the door.

Finally, the third time was a charm, and the glass made it safely into the door of the cabinet. Hanging around, observing the whole thing, I learned a lot about handling glass. (I also learned that my grandfather’s vocabulary was broader than I had ever imagined.)

When I had my own family I used to warn my children – nag is probably a better word – to be careful around our old things.

“That (whatever it was) has been around for 100 years,” I would say. “You don’t want to be the reason it doesn’t get any older.” But to be honest, because I handled everything and did the packing when we moved, I broke far more stuff than my children ever did.

That’s why years ago I decided to let go of anything that made me hold my breath. I sold or gave away the things that were too fragile to live in a busy household, or too delicate to really enjoy. Most of what I kept, or have collected since, shows its age. And that’s OK with me.

I like to find things that have been mended or repaired. I like the idea that something was necessary enough, or special enough, to someone to spend the time and energy to make it whole again.

Mistakes happen, but they can teach us. Through our mistakes we learn to be more careful, but we also learn to celebrate the wrinkles and imperfections you can only get with age.

The mailbox

Reader, Joyce Johnson, of Spokane, sent a plea for help:

“I’m wondering if you can help me ‘fix’ a big mistake I made when I put my Mother’s 5-piece Mirro canister set from the 1950s into the dishwasher. To my horror, the dishwashing process took off all the ‘copper’ finish on the outside. Is there something I could use to apply a new, similar finish? I have to believe this has happened to other people. (Incidentally, I am very careful with the old pieces of china, etc., I pick up but I sure messed up on this one.)”

I took this question to several dealers around town and the general consensus was that the copper finish is gone for good.

I think Joyce should just chalk it up to experience and continue to enjoy those otherwise bulletproof canisters. They don’t make them like that anymore. I bet her mother would get a good laugh, if she heard about this.

Table setting 101

I had another kind of uh-ohmoment when I took the photo for last week’s story on setting a table with thrift store finds. As I was playing with china patterns, trying to come up with a mixed and matched place setting of vintage china, it crossed my mind to check the position of the flatware.

But I forgot. And I made a mistake.

Linda Rust, of Spokane, sent me a nice letter pointing out what I had gotten wrong:

“The first thing I noticed when I looked at the lovely picture was that the knife blade was facing the wrong way. The blade of the knife always faces inward. The reason why? Hundreds of years ago when knives were first put on tables for eating utensils the blades they used were the same knives used for hunting, skinning, carving, you name it. They were kept very sharp. Facing the sharp side of the blade inward prevented some nasty cuts if someone grabbed without looking.”

Thanks for writing, Linda. I can’t tell you how much my children enjoyed someone correcting my table manners for a change.