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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
Can you share a picture? This sounds awesome.
Beautifully put, thank you.
I often make a corollary-case: our lives should be valued by our accomplishments, not our experiences.
Of course. Well, except for say, the Elgin Marbles and the Hope Diamond and…okay, just being pedantic.
This is beautiful.
In the firearms and old car worlds, there are three kinds of collectors. There are those who collect for prestige or investment, having no emotional attachment to what they trade beyond the moment. There are those who accumulate and hoard, laying in some collection that they aim to force on their descendants, to my mind as a way to preserve themselves really (“Remember Me! I made this collection!”).
Then there are the caretakers and preservers. These are the people who, for a time, gather, preserve, and enjoy their collections, knowing full well that what they are doing is really acting as a custodian “for the next guy”. When I rebuild an antique rifle, or (as I am now doing) get an old car going, I know full well that my kids may not want any of it. They may well sell it all for cash, and that would be OK. That sale would enable someone else to enjoy the use of such things for a time.
So I rebuild these old things with pride for “that next guy” to enjoy. The car is “mine” only for a short time, and I wish that whoever enjoys it in times yet to come does so with some thanks for those who took the time to preserve it, and returns the favor to generations beyond.
How would you feel if they didn’t enjoy or use the car, but also couldn’t bring themselves to sell it because of its association with your memory?
Beautiful and true. Thanks SOS.
A car is a large object to hang on to for mere sentimentality, and it is the type of machine that will rot without regular use. I will try, as they become old enough to understand, to explain that. Holding on to a car unused is little better than holding on to cake uneaten.
Double like.
Buddhist and Jewish? ;-)
This is such a problem for me. My attic is filled with family things that I don’t use and can’t part with.
I could sell them, but I could never replace them for what I could sell them for. Most of them I couldn’t replace for any sum of money.
And there’s the grief issue. Letting go of these artifacts feels as though I’m letting go of the people who treasured them.
My attic is just one massive headache. :)
My wife’s solution is to photograph them, so we have a permanent record. The photos take up much less space, even if printed or bound into an album. And who knows? In a digital age, the photos may outlast the artifacts.
When my kids were little, a lot of family members passed away within a short time, and I inherited, among other things, some priceless hand-croqueted tablecloths and other pieces from my both my husband’s family and mine. I had so much on my mind at that time that when I was given these things, I didn’t write down or hear clearly who made them. I just tucked them away for later. Now I don’t know what I am looking and could every time. What an idiot I was. If I only I had listened better.
The photographs are a good idea. My mom left me some beautiful Wedgwood pieces that were made when the company was young. They are so beautiful I’m afraid to even handle them. Photographs would be nice to have.
And there are my in-laws’ photograph albums. So many unlabeled photographs and no one around to ask.
Sigh.
One of these days, . . .
What I love most are the old books I inherited from everyone. But no one will love them except me. I really love books.
If I get hit by a truck, my kids will shoot me in effigy when they see the mess in my attic.
Darn–wish I’d thought of that!!
A handful of my personal possessions are of great value, all of it sentimental.
The desk is of, particular value because one day when I was cleaning, I removed one of the drawers in the cadenza and found a note written on the wood, in my grandmother’s spidery handwriting.
It’s in pretty good shape, and is at least 100 years old. I’ve never had it appraised, and I never will.
There is a fine distinction between what we own and what owns us.
Not even at Antiques Roadshow? “I could never part with this… but it’s good to know what it’s worth.”
Oh, man. It would be a mother pain to move. Not only did they build things to last back then, they built them to stay put too.
One of my most valued possessions is an aluminum ingot that my father supervised in the casting. It is nearly worthless in currency but speaks to my heart every time I look at it. I also have his Bibles and poetry books.
My son will take my books.
My daughter will sell the possessions she inherits without thought. That’s okay too. They will be hers to do as she wants.
I had a granduncle who apparently did some amateur theater. I have a book that he had owned, one of Shakespeare’s plays. What makes it fun is that his name was James Stewart.
SoS, thanks for the pictures!
When my grandmother passed, my family got her furniture, etc.
My wife and I asked for one thing: a 1950s era yellow stool upon which she cut the hair of her children and grandchildren, for many decades.
Now my wife uses it to cut the hair of her husband and children… since my grandmother taught my wife, there is a real connection there.
I hope my kids treasure it as well, if it keeps holding up.
I have some very nice, but currently non-functional, 16mm and 8mm motion picture equipment.
Pretty soon, the number of people who have the expertise to repair these cameras will have been reduced to zero.
I should sell ’em to people able to invest in their rejuvenation, but I keep thinking to myself, “some day I’ll scrape the money together to have them repaired.”
And then what? Am I gonna make the next great 16mm movie? Almost certainly not when an HD video camera is so much cheaper.
A keen recognition, that what is really important is passed on to others, in hopes that it will be maintained or perhaps improved upon, down through the ages.
Son of Spengler: “The volumes will pass from owner to forgotten owner, while we preserve the names of those inside.” I hope those who are bequeathed these items will remember you, especially in their prayers.
This is a wonderful post. And yet it stirs some troubling thoughts in me, but not necessarily in an unhealthy way.
Four years ago, I learned rather harshly that things, even our treasures, are largely temporary in nature. We had owned a rather extensive collection of oil paintings, such that at least one adored every room of the house. My favorite was that of a white tiger. Had it survived, would be worth more than a few thousand dollars by now. Of all the personal effects we lost, the art I miss most of all.
I walk through the rebuilt house today, and almost everything is but a few years old. It is hard to identify anything that holds value in the way they did before.
And yet, some of the salvage, little valued before the storm, now holds greater value simply because they, like we, survived. Strange in a way. And in a way, not so strange at all.
Are there “things” I would have liked to pass down to my children? Sure. But as you so rightly infer, that legacy isn’t dependent on what we have, but who we were, and what we gave.
This might be my favorite post of yours!
Thank you!
My sister had her China Cabinet appraised (~$10,000) on Antiques Roadshow. You send in pictures of such a big item and then the AR staff determines if it is worth bringing in, paying for professional movers to pick up / return the item.
“I offered to my wife: Would she like some expensive jewelry? She said no.”
I have nothing to say about this. I just wanted to separate it so I could look at it longer, by itself.