the past lives and loves of vintage "things"

Many a time I sit with a piece of vintage loveliness in my hands, and wonder who owned it before me, and what wonderful stories it would have to tell, if it were able.  I find it so fascinating that, in reality, these are all just "things", but they are "things" that once belonged to someone who had their own story, their own loves and losses.  Some of the items I work with, especially the really old fabrics, fascinate me.

I like to think of who might have worn them, and what they would have thought if they knew that something they owned would be being transformed into something else, completely different, 120 years later.  I find certain pieces especially evoking, like the sash ribbons.  Whenever I purchase them, in all their finery, my first instinct is to loop them around my waist, and tie them in a bow at the back.  Then I cannot help but think who the last person was that stood in just the same fashion, making the exact same movements, with the exact same sash, 100 years ago.

A few days ago, during Radio 2's Pause for Thought (yes, I am no longer cool enough for radio 1),  I heard a true story by Baroness Julia Neuberger, Senior Rabbi at the West London Synagogue.  It seemed to encompass the same thoughts that I have expressed here, so thought I would share it with you.

“A few weeks ago, I was away in rural Ireland and a friend rang me to ask if I had any darning wool. She’d been to our local town, and there was none to be had. ‘Probably not, as I’m not a darner’, was my response, but I said I’d look. In my mother’s sewing box I did indeed find some beige darning wool, with ‘Stopwolle’, darning wool, printed in German on it. It must have arrived with my grandparents’ stuff just after the Second World War began. It’s an extraordinary story. My grandparents left Germany as Jewish refugees only a few days before war broke out. People leaving were only allowed to take one suitcase, and no valuables. So a Nazi official came to check they weren’t taking anything forbidden. As he stood there, he said to my grandfather: ‘Ludwig, take what you want- anything you can get into those cases. I won’t say anything.’ He’d been a fellow prisoner of war in France in the First World War. Even more amazing, after my grandparents had left, this same man, we think, and others who’d been with my grandfather in prisoner of war camp, went into the apartment and, instead of looting it, which was the norm, packed everything up and sent it on through France to England. My grandparents were living in a refugee hostel in one room when their furniture, china, glass, pictures and everything else arrived. Everything. Including the darning wool. So that card of darning wool has a story to tell. After the war, my grandparents tried to find the man concerned to thank him, but he had been killed. Yet his courage, and goodness in the face of evil , in horrible circumstances, lives on – in the darning wool, amongst other things. There’s always a reminder of goodness when it happens, and you can often see human goodness in the smallest things.”