03 Jul Friday…with Hand Carved Memories

When I decided that I would write some history of the table this week for the Life Band project with Rhodes Weddings, I didn’t realise that it would lead me into thinking much more deeply about life and how people view themselves within it…

I’ve realised that objects hold massive importance to me…I wanted to think about why, and also what significance other people put onto their own objects…

The table is the foundation of my domestic life…but that stems from pure practicality rather than any romance.

The table is the perfect size for me to spread out my work and completely mess up, and it’s also the perfect size for my son and I to eat at…

 I bought the table in Lewes, East Sussex, about 14 years ago, ( just before my son was 1 year old ), and the moment it was brought into the back room at home it almost felt as if it had been there before…it was a perfect and instant fit…

I wanted to find some images of it’s early life here, and I was so happy to find a picture of my late father sitting at the table mending things, and in the position the table originally held; the centre of the room! I also love how it just peeps into other photos of our life when my son was small…

…comparing it’s surface now to then, it looks a lot lighter to me which may have something to do with it’s position in front of the window now…

But then those pictures got me thinking about other people’s tables…

This is my Mum’s table peeping into to the photo ( I’m the devil, my best friend is the mummy! ) which she still has and uses daily… …and this is a picture I took last Autumn on the table shown above…without the tablecloth! …and just in the background you can see there is this chair, which now sits at my table! I also found this picture of my Granny’s flower arranging ‘presentation’ table…and my Grandpa’s yellow formica kitchen table…
I loved seeing tables of my childhood; seeing how unimportantly essential they are; like big, silent giants of the family…

But I wanted to think about other people’s tables too…this is my partner’s table…
…and his mother’s bedside table!…and the shared table of me and my son!I absolutely knew that I wanted the table shown on my life band, but I also know that not everyone would feel the same about their own table…

Some people feel strongly about other objects, and I was fascinated to ask people what  ’thing’ was important to them and which they thought represented something of who they are and what their life is…I wanted to imagine how it would translate into their own life band…
So I asked a few friends…

This week I visited Susan Bell …

She said it had been quite difficult thinking about what object represented something of her life as she’d spent her childhood moving around a lot; objects didn’t seem to hold such importance…

…yet in her fireplace there was a box with a small feather; the feather of her chicken who had been recently stolen by a fox…

…a lichen covered stick from Scotland ( where Susan is originally from ) as well as a well worn map……and then there was this cup…the cup which inadvertently led her towards telling me about the object which means so much to her, and which represents a massive part of her whole being…The cup and saucer shows her Grandparents’ caravan…her grandfather saved up to buy it, made lots of the fittings and things to go inside it, including a little wooden bed for his granddaughters…

There was a lot of love for this caravan…and then Susan’s family moved to Japan when she was still quite young, and the caravan was sold…

It was at this point Susan told me she’s had a campervan  for about 10 years…she said it was nothing special but it was something she loved…

It was parked a few minutes away because it’s not roadworthy at the moment, so we walked down the road to meet Dolly…

…and Dolly was the life object!

Having spent so many years travelling around, and now having lived in one place for quite a while, it was obvious that  ‘Dolly’ was part of Susan’s family, and a strong part of her self…

The photos below are portraits of Dolly’s details…
But it was the corner of the driver’s seat which caught my imagination…in life band terms, this would be perfect…the worn down imperfections of the driver’s seat; the hand holding that corner before each journey, the chair which has been the backbone of each adventure, and all part of ‘Dolly’ who has supported and lived alongside Susan’s wanderlust, love and necessity to freely travel…
I was genuinely moved by this loving friendship…

Ironically I had once had a ‘Dolly’ too, a 2CV, my first car; and yesterday I kind of missed her…

I’d felt very privileged being allowed into a piece of Susan’s personal history, and it was her Dolly’s colour which inspired this weeks arrangements…her vibrant orange defied the fading corners of her life and which left me in no doubt that there was masses of life in Dolly yet, despite her rather beautiful imperfections…

What I love about the whole concept of a life band is that you can create something so unique to your life; working with the details of something which you may not instantly acknowledge is so important…something which will remind you that life isn’t always pretty, but whose marks and scars, in time, constitute its true beauty…

To have a look at the wonderful work Rhodes Weddings create, particularly their life bands, please take a look here as you could order your own very special piece

You can see the Steller Story version here