This flat pillow has a curious pedigree. Made of mattress ticking stuffed with feathers, the handmade object was brought from China by my great Aunt Minnie who served as a Protestant missionary. She was one of the thousands who visited the country in that capacity before the Revolution. The older sister of my grandfather, she was born sometime in the 1880s and preserved the style of another era well into brief window when I knew her in the mid-20
Thanks for the comments, Steph who remembers these parts of my childhood, Lynn who knew our Aunt Minnie as well. Precious to be able to connect through these shared experiences.
Aunt Minnie was the most exotic person in my life, too, as my father's aunt. I don't remember a gift like your wonderful bunny, but I remember the gift of the experience of having my first real dim sum in San Francisco's Chinatown with her. After leaving China she was initially living outside LA in the foothills in a garden cottage at a religious retirement home. The details are fuzzy. Aunt Minnie gave my parents a lovely open/ lacy ginger jar that I have as a table centerpiece. Another gift was an oddly shaped and carved from nature, shiny wooden bowl that remains buried in one of my closets. This "essay" of yours is a family keeper and it will be stored with my loose genealogical collection.
I vaguely remember Bunny and am surprised that you still have him in your possession through your many lifetimes and moves. Interesting to me, as well, that he and other companions of your childhood are male. Curious.
Minnie, such a frivolous old-fashioned Louisa Alcotty name for such a woman.
The other day, I wore my French grandmother Denise's diaphanous embroidered blouse that she acquired as a young woman when living in Romania. Unlike the many things of my mother's that I wear every day, I feel no particular attachment to my grandmother through her blouse, still it amazes me that it remains in nearly pristine wearable condition 100 years later.
Your last paragraph resonates so strongly as to leave me nearly breathless.
Hi Johanna, really interesting family history as well as what clothes and clothes-like objects mean for us. I don't have that from my own family, but I have got a chore coat from an old water station man in Virginia, which I am mending and I have a pair of 100 years old overalls from Alabama, which I also try to mend, making a kind of combined wearable art and honoring the people who have worn them, but back to family, I have hundreds of letters from my grandmother and her 7 kids, covering the time from 1900-51, that's incredible interesting. anyway, I really enjoyed the story about aunt Minnie! See you soon in Paris! Niels
Thanks for the comments, Steph who remembers these parts of my childhood, Lynn who knew our Aunt Minnie as well. Precious to be able to connect through these shared experiences.
Aunt Minnie was the most exotic person in my life, too, as my father's aunt. I don't remember a gift like your wonderful bunny, but I remember the gift of the experience of having my first real dim sum in San Francisco's Chinatown with her. After leaving China she was initially living outside LA in the foothills in a garden cottage at a religious retirement home. The details are fuzzy. Aunt Minnie gave my parents a lovely open/ lacy ginger jar that I have as a table centerpiece. Another gift was an oddly shaped and carved from nature, shiny wooden bowl that remains buried in one of my closets. This "essay" of yours is a family keeper and it will be stored with my loose genealogical collection.
I vaguely remember Bunny and am surprised that you still have him in your possession through your many lifetimes and moves. Interesting to me, as well, that he and other companions of your childhood are male. Curious.
Minnie, such a frivolous old-fashioned Louisa Alcotty name for such a woman.
The other day, I wore my French grandmother Denise's diaphanous embroidered blouse that she acquired as a young woman when living in Romania. Unlike the many things of my mother's that I wear every day, I feel no particular attachment to my grandmother through her blouse, still it amazes me that it remains in nearly pristine wearable condition 100 years later.
Your last paragraph resonates so strongly as to leave me nearly breathless.
Hi Johanna, really interesting family history as well as what clothes and clothes-like objects mean for us. I don't have that from my own family, but I have got a chore coat from an old water station man in Virginia, which I am mending and I have a pair of 100 years old overalls from Alabama, which I also try to mend, making a kind of combined wearable art and honoring the people who have worn them, but back to family, I have hundreds of letters from my grandmother and her 7 kids, covering the time from 1900-51, that's incredible interesting. anyway, I really enjoyed the story about aunt Minnie! See you soon in Paris! Niels