by the bowl breaks (1)
… an addition to my ‘breaks’ series of a sort, with more photos to come…
Added the next day, this note from Elisa, whose bowl this was:
One of the casualties of our return from the English countryside to the Pacific coast. Three months boxed up in a boat and rattling across the length of Canada proved too much for my beloved Mason Cash mixing bowl. I used it lovingly for sourdoughs and homemade mozzarella and birthday cakes, and often let it sit out on the counter as it was ever so good-looking. I’m sure it is glad that my mother has transformed its shattered state into art, and that we will bury it at the base of a potted plant. Not a bad life, surely, but I’ll miss it.
September 5, 2012 in Home, Photoworks, Textures by Marja-Leena
That looks like one of those large old-fashioned bread mixing bowls. Maybe it’s something else – even something tiny – but it looks like a no-nonsense working bowl to me, and brings back memories.
What a wondrous conjunction the smooth inner bowl with the paper, and the jagged rough-ish with brown edges break with the folds and shadows: the silver lining!
I hope it wasn’t something sentimental, Marja-Leena, but even if it was, you’re turning it into another kind of beauty!
Your break pictures often make me think that accidents of this kind can be worth while.
Susan, yes, that’s what it is. It belonged to daughter Elisa and broke in shipment from England. I have one similar to it in a tan colour which was my mother’s, so yes, memories…
Olga, how wonderfully you put into words what I’m trying to capture with the camera, thank you!
Beth, I think it was very sad for Elisa to discover her favourite bowl broken in transit. I asked to photograph it before it gets thrown away.
Joe, indeed, I do love to catch this kind of opportunity to take interesting photos. For me, the ‘breaks’ I’ve had with my own things in the past have perhaps felt less painful when visually recorded. I might put up the links to those in the next post.
You might read Stephanie Kallos’ novel, “Broken for You”.
Black Pete, that does sound interesting, in fact I see it is already on my ‘to read’ list so must look for it on my next library visit. I love the broken plate Kallos has on her website.
The phrase ‘the bowl breaks’ keeps teasing me as if there must be a poem with those words which I may have heard somewhere. All I could find was a Rumi one which doesn’t seem to be what I think I’m looking for. Anyone?
Too bad! I have a yelloware-and-similar collection of bowls, and I hate it when they suffer the slings and arrows of misfortune.
We have a similar white bowl that Mike’s grandmother (a colorful half-French Canadian and half-Mohawk lady) used to make bread daily. Right now is mounded high with little sacks of tea from A Southern Season in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
***
Oh, and the most famous “bowl breaks” line I can think of is this:
Ecclesiastes 12:6
King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
Marly, these bowls handed down by mothers and grandmothers have such history and surely make our baking better, even that tea in that fascinating sounding grandmother’s bowl.
I am rewarded in my secret unvoiced hope that you would recall some ‘bowl breaks’ quote, thank you! I was even thinking you might be inspired to write a wee poem of your own, but I know how busy you are, Marly.
As I have finished the biggest stage of that reading project, I am hoping to have writing time while rereading the first cut books… Though I have a lot of catch-up work to do in general. Ugh!
We do sometimes use our big white bowl, but we have lots of others, and I would feel terrible if that one were broken. It has more meaning attached to it than most objects, or most bowls.
Marly, all that reading sounds like too much work to me. I never have enough time for that. Yes, that bowl does sound too precious to use.