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The Things We Own
A solo cellist once explained what it’s like to own and play an 18th-century instrument: “Many hands have played this instrument before I was born, and others, I hope, will play it centuries after I’m gone. You don’t really own it; you hold it in trust, and care for it during your lifetime.”
Great works of art are known by their artists, not their owners. A Van Gogh will always be a Van Gogh, no matter where it hangs. Lesser works, too: Tiffany jewelry will always be Tiffany. Nonetheless, although some of us are content to admire beautiful objects, many (most?) of us can be so struck by beauty that we desire to possess it, even if only for a brief moment.
Some years ago, I considered investing a modest sum in diamonds. But it seemed a shame to have them sit in a dark safe somewhere. I offered to my wife: Would she like some expensive jewelry? She said no. Investments are bought and sold; she would be loath to part with it later. Most of us are not like the actresses who borrow fancy clothes and sparkly rocks to walk the red carpet, returning the costume after the show.
I have a violin that I should probably sell. It doesn’t have a great sound, but has some antique value because of its maker, who lived on the German side of the French-German border after WWI. Quality materials were scarce, but labor was plentiful, and he hired French craftsmen. The instrument’s proportions are German; the workmanship of its neck, scroll, and back scream “Francois!” When the maker’s brother, C.F. Martin, moved to the US and started selling guitars, he sent some of his cheaper violins stateside for his brother to sell to high school students. One of these students kept her instrument until her death 60 years later. And a few years after that, her widowed brother presented the violin to his new wife’s grandson, a high-schooler in need of a full-size instrument of his own. I should probably sell it; but I can’t.
A friend of my daughter’s described her father’s collection of Civil War-era firearms. He has turned their Manhattan apartment into a museum of sorts. When he visits other museums, she says, he compares their holdings to his own. She described helping him maintain and care for them, periodically removing and reapplying the proper preservatives to maintain the blued finish on the steel. They are her inheritance; but how can she love them as he does? Will she keep them when their current owner passes into history?
My own collectibles are meager. My small but beloved collection of firearms is of no historical value; I doubt anyone in my family will want them, and I expect they will be converted to cash. A ring and a watch I inherited will probably find a new home in the family, maybe for another generation. Ditto the fancy watch I recently splurged on, unless I sell it off before then. There’s that violin. The only painting I own was done by my great aunt. It’s aesthetically balanced and I enjoy looking at it, but its value is mostly sentimental, and sentiment is hard to pass down.
The one collection of physical property that will almost certainly be valued for another generation is our Judaica. A silk matzah cover made by a relative in the 1930s; the folio edition of the Babylonian Talmud that my grandfather bought in the 1940s to replace the set he couldn’t bring from Europe; the brilliantly-conceived Seder “plate” made up of a series of evocative clay receptacles (an altar for the shankbone, a wheelbarrow for the haroset, etc.) that we were given as a wedding gift. Our silver Judaica is aesthetically appealing, but for the most part lacks distinction, perhaps with the exception of one exquisite kiddush cup engraved with the Hebrew name of its owner.
And yet: The value of these items, too, is mostly sentimental. How many subsequent generations will desire them? My Talmud is desirable first and foremost for its utility, its contents; its provenance is trivial, otherwise. Surely the rabbis of the Talmud owned many things, many beautiful things. However, what we have and value two millennia later are their words, the great edifice of rabbinic Judaism they built. The volumes will pass from owner to forgotten owner, while we preserve the names of those inside.
Holding items of great beauty does not make them ours. We will be remembered not for what we have owned, but for what we have made.
Published in Culture
I completely understand your sentiments.
I own a historic oddity on loan with a museum. Because there were only 3, and one of the other 2 was featured in an obscure book. I thought that it was interesting, and also a shame that it would live its life in my cabinet not enriching the world around me. So I loaned it to a museum. The head curator and director, after convincing them of its rarity and authenticity, flipped their nut to see something from an obscure book and got downright giddy.
I feel the same way about my great-great-great-great-grandpas skeet gun. My other great-grandpas rolltop desk, my grandpas boy scout .22. 5 generations of quilts made by my female ancestors, and all the rest of the detritus of life that rolls down hill and binds a man to a place and people.
That said, I buy my wife tiffany jewelry, and myself similiar because I see how cheaply a man’s life truely is by the estates selling his jewelry on ebay. Tiffanies will always be tiffanies.
Saddleback leathers slogan is: Your kids will fight over it when you are dead. That struck me and shaped how I viewed consumerism.
“The value of these items, too, is mostly sentimental. How many subsequent generations will desire them?”
I encourage you to try to pass on the sentiment by telling your children how important these objects are to you, what their stories are, and how you plan on passing them on to them. They may shrug at first but when you are old or gone, they will value these stories more and pass them on too.
I’ve decided that I won’t buy old books unless I’m going to read them. They deserve that. Of course, I’ve lost out on some good deals that way, but there it is.
Now, heirlooms, those are an obligation one way or the other.
The loyalty we show to things is a scale model of the loyalty we show to people and institutions. I mean, who hasn’t felt loyalty to a car?
I make quilts as gifts, and always embroider the name of the person it was made for and the date. Many are for babies and weddings. I own a quilt made by my great-grandmother. I don’t know how I will determine which of my kids gets it, but I treasure it, and it hangs in the living room even though it is very worn.
A few weeks ago we visited Cremona, Italy, where Antonio Stradivari lived and worked. The things we make will probably never gain the fame of his instruments, but within our families I think they will be loved and cherished because they are a link to the maker and everybody in between. I intend for all my descendants to have a quilt made for them so long as I can make them, whether they value it or not.
Mrs. iWe does this, too! Gorgeous gifts, which mean a lot to the right recipients.
I can confirm.
We will be remembered most for what we have lost …
Fitting since I recently watched a PBS special on the origin of the “Silent Night” hymn. That origin was common knowledge as hearsay, but wasn’t verified until someone connected to a historical group just happened to be talking with someone who had inherited a handwritten copy of the music. It was written by the author himself. The owner hadn’t known.
Those are the stories that make auction and treasure hunt shows interesting. There’s so much history floating around, often with fascinating personal and family stories attached.
When my family inherited some old mission furniture from my great(2) aunt, it wasn’t long before we stupid kids set drinks on it without a coaster. Every heirloom needs branding!
The items most dear to me aren’t worth much monetarily and aren’t that important to anyone else. I collect sea shells, among other bits and bobs. From corals to snail shells, scallops to olive shells, nothing is more enjoyable for me than discovering these little life-born ornaments that wash ashore like unwanted litter. It helps that they remind me of my favorite place on Earth, the beach where my extended family came together each year when I was a child… and where the next generation in our families continue to meet for carefree laughter.
But when I’m gathering shells, I make it a point to give away my favorites. That’s my thankful sacrifice to God and a reminder to myself that this world is fleeting. Beauty here dimly reflects the beauty to come.
One day, I will inherit my dad’s wonderful but inexpensive rocks and minerals. If I have the wherewithal, I might open a little museum of rocks and shells. The Houston Museum of Natural Science focuses on rare and expensive specimens, but I find that people are just as impressed by simple and common ones. Common as they are, they are often missed.
I am the opposite. I don’t think I own anything of significant value, either monetary or sentimental. All my photos are digital. Memories are stored in my brain. If my house burned down, I don’t think anything in here is un-replaceable. Maybe my son’s favorite Thomas blankie (aka “Fuzzy”).
I have an original boxed set of Winston Churchill’s The Second World War. Found it at the Blue PArrot, a used book store which sounds like a gay bar, in Tokyo. Felt I was rescuing it from a fate worse than death.
Got it home, realized that only the cover was really mobile The books are beautiful, but the glue or fabric or something in the inner binding has gone to dust. The ominous creak as I got it halfway open convinced me to never open them again.
I ache to read them.
I also wonder if I should just rip the pages out and scan them in. Same issue with a ridiculously unobtainable family history from Denmark.
I also have a handy volume from 1929 on how to beat the market!
Have them re-bound…they deserve to be read.
This is a thing?
Professional book binders are out there. They specialize in restoring old falling-apart volumes.
The heartbreak is this — they are in BEAUTIFUL shape, except for the creaky old glue. I’ll look in to — when I get back to the States.
The good ones can save the covers too.
O.O
I’ve got one of my great-grandfather’s books on machining, printed about 1910. The binding is shot (he used it a lot, then when his son in law, my grandfather, inherited it, he let it rot in his basement), but it has everything you would want or need to know about industrial milling operations – runs about 700 pages, and is approximately 12 x 14″. I am planning on having it rebound at some point soon. My cousin took the companion volume on lathes and is likely to do the same soon too.
Same shop, I hope! Sounds magnificent.
Nah, my cousin lives out near Philly. But he has a couple of lathes and I don’t. I, however, have access to mills and he does not. It was a fair split at the time.
Being married to a librarian, I know that they tend to know book binders. If you come to SE Lower Michigan, I can make suggestions. Anywhere else, see your local librarian and ask who does it for them and how well they like the service.
One more thing about librarians and book binders (Did you know that Mozart’s grandfather was a book binder?), they often will use more than one. They have their periodicals bound in volumes. This is often done by a separate company and service from the binder who repairs the books.
I know I’m chiming in late, but this post really hit home with me. I’ve inherited a lot of odds and ends from my grandparents that are not always valuable but are precious to me because of who owned them. I have my great-great grandmother’s (Molly Pearr Hamilton) diary she kept during the War Between the States, living in Middle Tennessee. She was a schoolteacher and an absolutely beautiful writer, and she describes life in occupied territory with wit. Her diary was featured in the documentary, “In the Shadow of Cold Mountain” in 2003, which some of you might have seen. I was interviewed for it.
I collect coins, and I inherited a collection my great grandfather started and my grandfather built on. My cousin inherited another part of this collection, but he sold it when he joined a cult. The callous treatment of family items really caused a lot of anxiety in the rest of the family.
I have a lot of books, owned by family, that mean a lot to me. Lots from my grandfather, a few from my dad (who’s still alive). I love that both of them wrote in the margins. I get to see their thinking. Dad made lots of comments on political philosophy in the pages of Owen Wister’s “The Virginian,” which explains an awful lot of his ideas.
My family items will stay in the family. No one else will care about their personal histories—who owned them and what they went through—and that’s probably more valuable to me than their monetary price.
I’ve got my grandfather’s engineering drawing set (ca. 1926), which my uncle and my father (both engineers) used when they were in college. Granddaddy then gave it to me when I went to college. I have one daughter in architecture school, and perhaps she’ll be interested. I also have his ~1930 Western Electric telegraph units, from when he worked his job as an AT&T telegraph operator. They’ve been played with for two generations of kids so far.
There are some mid-19th century oil paintings, some of ancestors and some by ancestors. From the poor farming side of the family, I’ve got an old school slate. Come to think of it, we seem to have hung on to heirlooms pretty well for a run-of-the-mill middle class family.
Finally, I have a few non-family items. Physics labs periodically throw out old equipment, and I keep my eyes open. From college, I wound up with an 1878 Edison tinfoil phonograph but didn’t know what I really had until researching it last year. It turns out to be a museum piece and very rare. I might have to put it on loan to our museum, or at least on display in my physics department.
Coming very late to this lovely discussion, I want to say that I spent the past week in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter of Krakow. In the local market square people set up stands to sell old stuff — costume jewelry, watches that still run (or don’t), old Communist party pins, military medals, and even Nazi memorabilia. Seeing the military items brought on a profound sadness — how many of those medals, even the Iron Crosses, were awarded at the cost of blood, toil, tears, and sweat? And now, generations down the line, the young people get rid of grandfather’s attic stash, hardly realizing the terrible purchase price of those items? One table had a set of document stamps; when I took a closer look, I saw the eagle and swastika, and wondered what German official used them and for what bureaucratically efficient purpose, and what Polish or Russian veteran rummaged through the office and took these for a souvenir? Obladi, oblada, life goes on….