All items have a provenance. Man-made or not. Some may have no monetary value but nevertheless be priceless.
PROVENANCE OF A WOODEN BOX
Hidden amongst the clutter in an old brick building is a square wooden box, a sturdily constructed cube with a heavy metal hasp.
During the 1914/18 war thousands of Belgian refugees sought sanctuary in Britain and were housed in huts hastily constructed from any available timber, in some cases railway sleepers. These people had fled in such a hurry that they had been forced to leave behind most of their possessions, only taking with them such things as they could easily carry on their persons or in suitcases and bundles.
On arrival in Britain they were dispersed to camps in diverse locations, quite a few in the North of England. One of these camps was in Jarrow and, when long after the war was over and the refugees returned to their homeland or, in some cases absorbed into the local population, the contents of the huts were to be sold.
Grandma Bucknall sallied forth on another of her bargain hunting expeditions. No doubt she immediately realised the potential of the large wooden boxes, one of which had been allocated to each refugee to be used as a repository for their meagre possessions. A padlock and key ensured the only privacy these people were likely to encounter in the Spartan dormitories.
‘Spare clothes, blankets, articles not in frequent use but too good to be discarded could be kept in one of these boxes’, thought Grandma and speedily purchased one. So did her daughter Leah and years later both boxes were transported to Yorkshire where they became useful items of furniture – an extra cupboard to be covered with chintz cloth in the bedrooms of two different houses.
What happened to Auntie Leah’s box I do not know but the one which my mother brought to Yorkshire, and which, as a very small child I would look at and wonder what strange things might be hidden beneath its heavy lid, lies gathering dust and is full of old tools and junk in the brick building
A hundred years have passed since it was made and used by those refugees. Did they manage to rescue precious photographs and treasures from their lost pasts and keep them safe in the box?
Did they ever think about their box in later years?
Well, occasionally I think about it and wonder who was the first person to lift the lid and what became of that person and lots of other things…
POSTCRIPT
Since I first wrote this I have brought the box to my home in Monckton Drive and it now lives in the garage full of children’s toys.
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PROVENANCE OF A TEACADDY
For three years they had been returning, boatloads, walking wounded and stretcher borne. Shattered bodies and minds leaving the battlefields and trenches of Northern Europe to fill the hospitals of Britain. There were so many casualties that large houses and country mansions were utilised as hospitals and convalescent homes.
Up the streets and down the back lanes of the towns which lay in the vicinity of the Newcastle War Hospital men knocked at doors, hoping to sell items which had been made by patients who were well enough recovered to undertake such tasks.
My maternal grandmother, Ann Bucknall, ordered a tea caddy that was duly delivered, personalised by having had her initials inscribed on the lid, to her home in York Street, Jarrow.
An elongated octagonal shape made from boxwood the tea caddy is the colour of dark honey and is decorated. On one side is depicted the badge of the Royal Artillery surmounted by the letters N.W.H., the date 1917 with a painted design in black and red. The calligraphic letters on the lid are entwined in foliage and on the front is the inscription, Ward 1.
I never knew it to contain tea, only scraps of this and that. A miscellany of oddments. Buttons; bits of broken things; foreign coins and sealing wax.
Bittersweet box; scratched and faded. Magic memories trapped forever within your hollow heart
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PROVENANCE OF A TABLE
Mouldering in an old brick building at the end of a long garden path is a table. It is not the only object in the building. In fact, there are so many other things that you probably wouldn’t even see the table at first glance. Wedged between and behind the cast-off paraphernalia of decades it serves as a repository for even more obsolete items. Boxes, wheelbarrows, gardening implements and empty metal drums form a barrier between the door and the table. Not to mention the scratched and battered dressing table and other pieces of discarded furniture which once stood proudly on carpet squares, polished and cosseted, reflecting in their now blemished mirrors the images and lifestyles of people long dead.
Underneath the clutter of dusty plant pots and cracked jam jars, the lopsided doll’s house with its torn wallpapers and twisted chimney and the grit and grime of years, the table hides its scars. The grooves made by a hand operated mincing machine, the crescent shaped hollow where a carelessly placed cigarette burnt deeply into the hard wood. The myriad cuts and scratches caused by un-numbered knives and other sharp implements.
The tabletop is oblong, two of the corners are curved, the other two right-angled because it was originally the end leaf of a large mahogany dining table. The legs have been made and attached to the top by an amateur joiner, which no doubt accounts for its mongrel appearance. In its heyday, when forming part of the complete table, it probably wore upon its surface napery of fine linen, set with heavy silver cutlery and delicate bone china. Epergnes of fruit and tall silver candelabra would embellish its central area. The soft flames of the candles casting shadows and softening faces with their lambent light.
How it came into the possession of my family is a mystery. No doubt my Grandmother on one of her forays to the salerooms acquired it. Her spending power was limited but she had a good eye for a bargain and enjoyed viewing the varied merchandise almost as much as bidding and buying. Whether she bought the table complete with legs or just the top is debatable. But as, apparently, she kept its twin from the opposite end in the coalhouse shoring up the coal, it would seem most likely that they were purchased as a pair.
The table was used in the kitchen at 108 York Street, Jarrow. When my mother moved south to live in the West Riding of Yorkshire she brought it with her.
Breakfasts and dinners, pea-shelling and jam making, games playing and homework, weddings and funerals, high days and holidays, laughter and tears, the table pushed against the wall was a silent witness throughout the years. Now, for long enough, it has rested with the other outcasts, obsolete, unwanted, but not forgotten.
Maybe one day we will unlock the door, brave the spiders and hack our way through the webs to let the sun shine once again on the kitchen table.
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PROVENANCE OF A KITCHEN KNIFE
An object seven inches in length, aluminium handle and steel blade fused into one piece of dull metal. Scratched, scarred and discoloured, the letters U.S. on the handle announce its origins. Countless millions of these knives were manufactured in America and issued, with ration packs, throughout the world wherever the United States forces were engaged in hostilities – or, for that matter, simply stationed in barracks during peacetime.
Shortly after the end of the Second World War my mother heard that a sale of ex-army articles was to be held in Glasshoughton. Not a big sale – just a collection acquired by an enterprising person and which was to be displayed in an old outhouse in his backyard. Mr Wright lived in an old house on Front Street. He was a bluff old man, a retired farmer who had led a chequered childhood – grim by any standards. One of several children whose mother had died he had a succession of stepmothers each of whom brought with them their own families. The newcomers always took precedence and the original children were treated to varying degrees of neglect, depending on the humour of the current stepmother. Their father was uncaring about their well-being so they learned to live by their wits. On those nights that their father sent them to the public house with a jug they would trot between house and pub for refills. As the effect of the beer took hold on the couple the children took advantage of the fact and filched a few pennies from the change on each trip. It was the only way they ever got anything for themselves.
Mr Wright was a friend of my father’s and his wife often called at our house on her way to ‘collect t’eggs’ which she bought from Mrs Clarke who lived further down Sheepwalk Lane. Mrs Wright was a tall thin lady with a vast knowledge of homely crafts such as jam making, fruit bottling and wine brewing. She used to tell us about incidents in her childhood.
‘We went out into the fields and picked a peggy-tub full of cowslip flowers to make into wine’, she would say, and I would think ‘no wonder there aren’t many cowslips about ‘ as I sorted through the pile of second hand Girls’ Crystal magazines which she had brought for me
All that may seem irrelevant to an account of a kitchen knife but those are the kind of memories that it brings back to me. Those days after the war had ended when many things were still rationed and furniture and clothing carried a label signifying ‘utility’. When we were still at school and just becoming aware that a whole new life lay ahead. That of the adult world.
Anyway, our mother went to see what bargains she could find and came home with two or three army blankets that were very welcome, especially in those cold winters of the Forties. Our existing blankets were by then threadbare and clothing coupons were precious. Buying the blankets made a big hole in her budget and she had to forgo buying other useful items apart from the knife. How many potatoes has it chopped into chips? How many cabbages have been decapitated? How many apples peeled and turnips hollowed out for Halloween Lanterns?
When Alan and I visited South Korea in April 1995, invited to share in the Commemoration of the 42nd year since the truce between North and South Korea, we visited the War Memorial Museum. Amongst the fascinating display of memorabilia, in one showcase there lay a knife, identical to the one in my kitchen.
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PROVENANCE OF A WINDSOR CHAIR
Where the Great North Road (A1) slices through the Yorkshire countryside towns and villages cluster and sprawl over the landscape. Some no doubt had their origins long before the highway became important to travellers, far back in the misty time before maps or the written word could record them. Others grew from the sheer practicality of being close to a well-trodden pathway. Roman Cohorts, pedlars, pilgrims, mail coaches and highwaymen, cars and container lorries, one vast cavalcade streaming through the centuries along the dusty ever widening road which bisects the country from the South of England to Scotland. One such village is Bramham, notable for its busy crossroads and the country mansion, home of the Lane Fox’s, which was built in 1698. My mother’s sister, Annie, was in service at this large house early in the twentieth century and it was there that she met the man to whom she was later married, Richard Taylor. He was employed as coachman and when the internal combustion engine began to oust the use of horses as a mode of transport he graduated to chauffeur. He used to carry a sack of coal in the boot of the Armstrong Siddeley to hold it down to the ground.
When Annie and Richard married they moved into a house in the village and this enabled Annie to invite her mother to stay for a holiday. On one such visit, most probably just before the First World War, Grandma Bucknall went to a house sale in the village. An old man, no longer able to take care of himself, was selling the furnishings of his small cottage prior to leaving the area and moving to live with his daughter in Darlington.
Funds were limited but my Grandmother was very attracted to an old Windsor chair that she bought. When she took the chair back to Annie’s house she carefully wrapped it in hessian cloth that she stitched into place as protection on the train journey back to Jarrow. Whilst she was waiting for the train at the station the old man, who was waiting for the same train, approached her saying, ‘I’m happy to see that it’s going to a good home.
With its golden brown curves and soft patina the Windsor chair still has a good home with me. The old man can rest in peace.
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