I ran across this image on Flickr yesterday and could not resist the engaging collection of textures and traditional designs.
I never fully understood my grandmother’s way of keeping house until I learned about the Volga trade route between Northern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. Hipsters had told me about Viking mercenaries in Constantinople, but I didn’t connect that information with the old country until I learned about trade.
My mother’s people are Swedish but the history I learned was Anglo-centric. A coppersmith great-great uncle made his immigrant brother a “spider”, a three-legged tin-lined copper tea kettle, for making coffee when he was crossing the plains in a covered wagon. All the women in my maternal line have chosen hand-wrought mid-Eastern copper and brass accessories for home use. I assumed that was because that’s what was available in Western Washington, and that’s what was, to be sure, until recently. Comprehending the significance of the Volga has deepened my appreciation of these selections.
Casual reading about home style made it clear that there’s a continuum that runs along the river: one sees Hardanger-style table linens, an upright sofa and freestanding chairs surrounding an eating table, and ornamental brass and copper from the mid-East through Greece, northern Germany, and into Finland. These arrangements are not typically English.
I thought my grandmother’s preference for copper and brass came from her coppersmith genes, but there’s a larger cultural orientation. Sweden has had close ties to the Middle East since forever, and the kind of metal work shown above is a characteristic accent in a Swedish interior. It strikes the high note in a typically chaste room.
Before plastic, noble metal was the lightest, most durable ware.
The Triumph of Simplicity, Cooper-Hewitt’s catalogue of the Swedish National Art Museum’s showing of traditional silver designs, opened my eyes to portable equipment of privilege, and I was happy to discover nesting tumblers and toilet sets that are just as viable under a roof as they were in the field.
Early on, I bought an expedition-sized Swedish Svea brass kerosene stove, decorated with Arabic characters. I loved that stove and cooked many meals for twenty on it one summer without electricity. Later, I inherited my great-grandmother’s worn brass tray and discovered that it and the stove made an instant, portable kitchen. I assumed that both pieces were marketed to nomadic housekeepers before middle Eastern development.
Before the antique pickers swarmed Goodwill, I spent a couple of years casually collecting handmade ornamental copper and brass from the mid-east for the sheer love of its skilled handiwork. These things cost pennies at the time, must have earned their makers less than pennies when they were new, and are vulnerable to recycling when the metal market rises. I didn’t buy any more than I can use, but it was fun filling in holes in my inventory. It’s a hoot to use them in the garden or, rarely, in a secure campground.
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More after the jump.
