Searching for the Past

Recently my daughter Shannon and I went antiquing.  We visited two quaint little antique stores in Lawton complete with their resident dogs that greeted us at the door.  Each had an impressive array of china, Depression glass, clocks, furniture, and ephemera.  Browsing through those remnants of the past, I wondered what it is that draws people to antiques.  After all, a one –hundred-year-old plate is just a piece of glass not much different from what we can buy in any modern department or discount store.  I know some people collect antiques with an eye for investment, but for most of us it something more visceral, an urge difficult to define but felt within.      

            I bought three items that day: a Depression glass serving bowl, a cutwork lace table runner, and a postal greeting card postmarked 1916. Of course, each item is a distinctly feminine item and provides a glance into the lives of the women in our past.  I can imagine a housewife in the desperate throes of the Great Depression collecting beautiful glassware when she purchased staples such as oatmeal or flour for her family.  Inexpensive, mass-produced dinnerware was often given as promotional items.  Lacking funds for even essential items, she still would have taken pride in setting a beautiful table.

            When I place the cutwork lace runner on my dining table, I will be mindful of the hours of tedious, painstaking work that went into producing it.  Handwork and quilting were often a woman’s way of creating art under the guise of producing something practical for the home. Women also used these art forms as a way of occupying their minds in times of trouble and isolation on prairie homesteads. In Susan Glaspell’s short story “A Jury of Her Peers,” the main character uses piecing a quilt to “take up her mind.”

            Finally, the 1916 postcard will add to my Victorian postcard collection.  I collect these cards as a tangible way to connect to the past.  People seemed to use them the way we use email and text messages.  They were brief ways to let a special person know that someone was thinking of her.  It seems that most of the cards were to and from women—just like today where women maintain the lines of communication.

            I recently saw the movie Monuments Men, which tells the true story of a group of artists and art historians who saved valuable artwork stolen by the Nazis.  George Clooney’s character says that the mission was about saving a culture.  While Depression glass and needlework are not quite the same as French Impressionist paintings, they are products of our culture.  These everyday items of women’s lives give us links to times gone by.