In the past two weeks, I’ve managed to break my two favourite salad bowls. They were identical: old white porcelain with little pink roses and mostly scrubbed-off gold edging. I think they were really meant to be soup bowls. I thought they were pretty, but they were also exactly the right width and depth for the giant salads I make every day and proceed to eat all by myself. Yesterday I made my salad in another bowl, also pretty, but not quite wide enough and too deep. It worked but it was disconcerting.
I can’t just go buy another one of my favourites because I wouldn’t know where to find one. I got the one bowl from my mom about four years ago, along with a collection of other beautifully old and weathered bowls, plates, and platters, all collected at a junk shop in a small town in the Free State. It was one of the best birthday gifts I’ve ever been given. The second bowl I discovered by chance two years later at another junk shop, this time one at the top of a steep hill in Cape Town. I immediately bought it to join my other one.
The junk shop in Cape Town is a place I’ve spent hours in. Not so much anymore, but when I first moved to Cape Town I used to walk up that hill, up an up and up, at least once a month. Then I’d take my time to sift through every item crammed into the two rooms – crockery and cutlery, but also mirrors, paintings, chairs, card tables, lamps, ashtrays, gramophones, suitcases, who knows what else. I certainly didn’t know what half the things were. I was a student at the time with my little bit of disposable income going mostly towards drinks and late-night takeout so I don’t remember ever actually buying anything, cheap though it mostly was. But I did decide that one day, when I was making a home instead of just living somewhere, I’d collect the kind of pretty crockery I saw at the junk shop, all mismatched and old and worn, and I’d use them just like that instead of buying shiny new matching sets. Aside from liking the way these old things looked, the idea was that I wouldn’t have to be too sad if any of my things broke, since nothing would be part of a set and a broken bowl could be easily replaced by any other pretty old bowl from a junk shop.
Apparently I spoke about this idea quite a lot, because soon after I started making my first home, gifts of pretty old crockery started to appear at birthdays and Christmases. My mom’s big box filled to the brim was one of these. Another one was a gift of six little coffee cups and saucers that I had noticed and admired at the hilltop junk shop with my best friend. They looked similar to a teapot I’d found at a junk shop clear across the country, and I’m not sure why I didn’t buy them then. Months later, I was sitting in my cubicle, staring out the window despondently, when my friend called and told me to quickly come outside, she was on the sidewalk and wanted to give me something. It wasn’t my birthday or any other kind of special occasion but there she was with a package containing the six little cups and saucers.
A few pieces in my collection – which makes it all sound so much grander than it is – aren’t from junk shops. There’s my old gzhel mug from Russia, and the two tea-brewing mugs from my mom’s trip to Singapore. There are also my four Betta bowls. Betta bowls are an institution in my extended family. They are white and soft blue handmade pottery, and not just bowls, but dishes, plates, cutting boards, anything that took Betta’s fancy or that she was nicely asked to make.
Betta was my great-aunt, so her sister, my grandmother, had many Betta bowls. Betta died a few years ago, and then my grandmother too, just about three months ago. After the funeral, all of the cousins picked a few things from my grandmother's house, to remember her by. I picked a candle holder and two small Betta bowls that I had used for my morning oatmeal in on my last visit to my grandmother. My mom had two more of the same at her house that she didn’t use, and since she felt they belong together I now have four. I like that they remind me of my grandmother and Betta when I use them every day. Of course, every one of these bowls will break one day, as will all my other pretty old things. But by then there will be even more other pretty old things with their own stories of discovery and acquisition.
It’s possible that I’ll come across another one of my favourite salad bowls in yet another junk shop one day. That would be a nice surprise. I might also get used to the new pink salad bowl and become attached to using it for my salads, until it breaks and I move on to the next one.
