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Granny's washstand jug
Kintsugi Materials /
Epoxy adhesive and filler
Black urushi
Red urushi
Brass powder
Commission Price /
£265
Testimonial /
"It is wonderful to have the jug so beautifully repaired at last.
It is looking magnificent with branches of forsythia at the moment.
Clara explained the process carefully, so I could understand each of the stages of the repair. The costing & billing was also clear.
I very much appreciated Clara's sensitivity and warmth.
The finished jug gives me great joy"
In 1981 Linda's paternal grandmother, Dorothy Alice Collins, died aged 86. Linda's mother, the kind of busy, practical woman who was always helping family, friends & neighbours, came across Granny's washstand set. Knowing how much Linda would love it, she put it aside to take to her. Later that day, as she lifted the blue & white patterned pitcher from her car, it slipped from her hands, fell, cracked & broke. The beloved jug was hastily mended with superglue & then stood, pride of place, in Linda's family home for the next 21 years.
When I went to collect the jug for kintsugi repair, Linda told me about her granny & how, as a working-class woman, this washstand set would have been one of a few treasured nice things. It would have been appreciated & kept carefully through the business of family life. Interestingly, Linda never saw the set whilst her grandmother was alive. She, her mother, brother & sister have warm memories of taking the bus after school to have tea at Gran's house - a classic affair of sandwiches & sweet tea. But, she explained to me, "as children we never went upstairs!"
Being in the position to have even a few nice things was not inevitable for Linda's grandmother. In fact, she had worked hard to achieve respectability & a "proper" home & family of her own. Born out of wedlock in Herefordshire in 1895, she was separated from her mother who was unable to keep her as she was working in service. She was "passed on to whoever would have her". In that time & place, the stigma & lack of full legal status of illegitimacy weighed heavily (illegitimate children were half as likely to survive as children born to married parents). In spite of this, Dorothy both survived & dug her way out of her precarious social position. As a young woman she managing to get a job working in the Cadbury's factory, Bournville, near Birmingham, where they only took on "the brightest young ladies" She then married Charles, a local postman & with him she built a better, & safer life for herself.
The jug is a testament to the determination of Dorothy to create a stable, respectable family life. Testament too, to the care she took in preserving a certain level of decorum where both children & washstand sets were kept in their proper places. Perhaps now, with its delicate kintsugi repair, it is also a fitting tribute to the early losses & difficulties that are a part of Linda's grandmother's story & the woman she became.





































