Auld Lang Syne Weekend: A very long long rambling story about a little vase (sorry) - but the topic is about memories, isnt it? Warning! This is is a long post.....(Please forgive the typos I am not writer) Okay, so this may not be about the the best piece of pottery or the most valuable I have ever owned or the one I sold for thousands. Nor is the one that landed me unexpectedly on the Antiques Roadshow a while back. Nope, it is a simple and unpretentious piece. It is, however, the one piece that got me started a long journey of hunting pottery. Back in the Summer of 1963 my Grandpa and Grandma Perkins took me on a trip up North to the beautiful Grand Traverse Bay area along the sunny shores of Lake Michigan. The sky and the water were ever so blue- blue lots and lots of blue. North of Traverse City in Petoskey, Michigan we visited an old school that Stanley Kellogg had transformed into his pottery. It was filled with hundreds of pieces of pottery. Grandma Perkins wanted to buy a piece of pottery from there, but Grandpa said, Nope, Alice, they are just expensive molded pieces of junk. I remember Grandma looked really, really distressed about that because, Grandpa usually did not say no if Grandma really wanted something, but he was a pretty thrifty guy and if he said no that was about it. (that Depression Era life experience of denied gratification thing going on) Grandma looked profoundly unhappy. I thought she was about to cry. Not a good sight for an impressionable seven year old to experience on an otherwise upbeat and exciting summer adventure with just Grandma and Grandpa. We left the pottery and started driving along the coast. I remember Grandma looked really really unhappy. She just stared out the window and occasionally sighed. I had never seen her so unhappy. I remember we were driving along an idyllically scenic road up the coast, when we passed an art gallery housed in a clean white old freestanding storefront. The front window was just filled with paintings, sculpture, and pottery. Grandma perked up made Grandad turn around and go back. She went inside and started intently searching for something. What was she looking for, I thought? Then across the gallery I remember her seeing and then fixating on a row pottery along the far wall. She walked determinately and picked up a global shaped Stanley Kellogg vase in a Robins Egg Blue. She said, Look Owen, heres a piece of Kellogg that isnt molded! Grandad knew he was beat. He didnt say, Nope. He bought it without saying much of anything, even though it was several times more expensive than any of the molded pieces Grandma was looking at back at the pottery. Grandma carried that blue little vase on her lap for the rest of the afternoon. She smiled a lot. That little pot went back home to Royal Oak and held some of here delicate violets in her living room for the next 25 plus years. Grandma and Grandpa eventually passed on. My Aunt and Uncle were having a garage sale at their house to clean up some of the leftover items from G&Gs estate. I went there not expecting or wanting much of anything, but just to look. There on a table marked $.25 (25 cents) was Grandmas Kellogg vase! I had to buy it, it meant too much to her. They COULD NOT sell it to someone else for just $.25! What were they thinking??? Didnt they know???? I wasnt into pottery, it was about memories and that fun trip as a little kid on a sunny blue day back in 62. I had to have it. Ad it was just quarter. That little pot the more I looked at it, covered in its Robins egg blue glaze, although simple and a little textured, sparked something in me. Something deep and life changing. (big words, but true) Jump ahead another to today. I am about the same age as my Grandparents were when they took me on that trip. I realize that little piece started me on a long winding road of hunting, collecting, buying, selling (to pay for the pottery disease I have acquired and to keep the house from exploding from too much pottery-is there such a thing?). I have had thousands of pieces of pottery pass through my possession - everything from simple molded Nelson McCoy to Adelaide Alsop Robineau, Jens Jensen decorated Rookwood Weller Sicard that sold into the four figures and eventually it led me to Pewabic (like Kellogg it was a Michigan based pottery-totally different creatures, but both in Michigan). But that is another story...... Thanks Grandma Perkins.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 16:45:50 +0000
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