The Old Sideboard Redo

The east morning light is pouring into my dining room from the open door in this shot. It's mid-May, and me and my English sideboard are prepared for a new season.



I'm still unprepared, though, for how quickly the seasons come and go. Last week I heard for the first time the saying that time is like a toilet paper roll. The closer to the end you get, the faster it runs out! As indelicate as that image is, I must say that at this stage I'm eye-balling just how many squares I have left!




All this musing reminds me of lines from The Sheltering Sky. . . ,

"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless."
Paul Bowles

How many more times will I change up my sideboard? My mother-in-law kept the same arrangement in her living room for fifty years. She left it just as her mother arranged it for her FOR FIFTY YEARS! But I am a compulsive arranger. My son says the living room is changed every time he steps into the house.




But I have left my doggies just as they were. I thought I would do an all white theme, but found I couldn't live without my brown transfer-ware. So I removed the darker pieces for the duration. And a little goes a long way, I find. I'm becoming like Oscar Wilde who said,"I find it harder and harder everyday to live up to my blue china!" (read: brown transfer-ware).




And I always have seashells, though I live about as far inland in the high desert as you can get.






But white shells are the perfect compliment for white china and this ancient Wedgewood pattern of creamware which I found a few pieces of while digging around in the usual digging around places. It's unmarked, do you know it?





About a year ago I found this gem of a butter pot for ten dollars. The little cow makes me cry every time I see it. Who says money can't buy you happiness? Just out of sight to the right is an orphaned lid.




My little biscuit jar has a country scene on the front. It's just like peeking into another place and time. (Maybe Brambly Hedge!)





Gathered collections become more than the sum of their parts. They are like an eccentric family with their missing members, flaws, and scars bundled up together and living in harmony. Beautiful. Who wants an old tureen with a missing lid anyway? I say, "Come on in Tureen and make yourself to home!" (We might all lose our lids eventually.)

Standing by for duty.



Many of you agree that the graphics on the backs of china can be as pleasing (or more) than anything else. I like these plates better on the back than the front.

More light and lyrical patterns inside square ironstone bowls. All the action going on inside this cupboard is almost more than I can bear!




Eighteenth century homespun towels with crochet edges, including the one underneath everything, all originated in the same family.





I always have bird's nests here and there in-house too. These are evocative of spring, but will stay all summer. I use acorns and quail eggs inside as well as small shells and anything else from nature that I find interesting.





The open drawer is for bibs and napkins referred to in an earlier post. http://getcottage.blogspot.com/2010/04/anti-anxiety-lifestyle.html





My granddaughters wear this antique bib. It's similar to a blouse with no arms and covers everything front and back. I wish I had a dozen. They would be simple to reproduce but I no longer have any such ambition. Great idea for you creative gals lurking out there!






I have a serious love sickness for hand worked towels. Well--all kinds of white vintage towels.






It's time to close the drawer on this post, but I wanted to share what I heard in the shop a few days ago. A woman of a certain age remarked how when she turned fifty she looked around at all the very nice linens and things she was "saving", even things given her when she married, and wondered if she didn't start using them NOW when was she going to? She didn't have time left to even wear them out! So out they all came to be used every day.






My old friend Rebecca asked me recently didn't I worry that the little ones would break things? The sideboard is too high for the really short people, and the cupboards lock. The bigger visitors have learned respect. How many places are there left to do that? (And yes, like everywhere on the planet, sometimes things get broken, but it's most often Mr. C. that does it [just sayin' ]).








"The weary Mole soon had his head on his pillow, in great joy and contentment. But ere he closed his eyes he let them wander round his old room, mellow in the glow of the firelight that played or rested on familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him. . . It was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome."

Kenneth Graham, from the chapter Dulce Domum, The Wind in the Willows.

Ciao! Thanks for stopping by! And check out My Romantic Home for Show & Tell Friday.

Jacqueline

http://romantichome.blogspot.com/