This pottery vase was hand thrown, the finger marks of the maker evident on the surface. There are dribbles of glaze on the bottom and no maker’s marks that suggest it was the work of a competent amateur. I find the full-bodied form satisfying, the dark semi-matt glaze pleasing, and it sets off well an informal bundle of flowers. I have known this vase for many years. It was part of my mother’s collection, familiar in my childhood home. Yet strangely, it evokes few specific memories. If Mum used it for arrangements of daffodils or tulips, I cannot remember. The vase just sits in my memory, a little dusty, just as it sat on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard.
For the past two years, since my sister Ann died, the vase has been on top of the bookcase in our sitting room. She acquired it when our father died, and we each chose what we wanted to keep from our parents’ possessions. When Ann broke her hip and had to move into a care home, this vase was one of the very few things she insisted on taking with her. So what memories did it hold for her? “Do you want this?”, her daughter Sarah asked me. “Ooh yes,” I replied, not quite knowing why.
I sit with my fingers poised over the keyboard, allowing memories to surface. One vague image arises: I have a cold that has gone to my chest; Mother has prepared an inhalation of Friars Balsam; she holds my head under a towel, pressing my face down into the steam for longer than I find comfortable. But the memory fades as I write; no, I don’t think this was the vase she used to mix the balsam.
When I noticed it, almost forgotten again, on that top shelf, I took it down and Elizabeth filled it with cow parsley and sweet rocket, a couple of wild geraniums for a spot of colour. Suddenly, I recall one of Ann’s early successes in the late 1950s: wallpaper for the upmarket interior design company Sandersons – ‘quintessential British design’ – a profusion of wildflowers arranged in a classic urn. She was given a complementary roll or two, which was just enough for our father to decorate one wall in our front sitting room. He was distraught because as he hung it the paper bubbled horribly, but to his great relief had shrunk flat by the following morning.
Now the cow parsley has dropped petals all over the carpet, so they go on in the compost bin. I return the vase to the top shelf, its fugitive memories still hovering around.