Langenthal Porcelain (Swiss)
Circular Boîte with gilded and hand-painted exotic birds and flowers (no. 48)
circa 1940-60 (?)
Grimy, spattered with a big blob of what looked like blueberry juice and carelessly placed between piles of plastic toys spread across an old bed sheet, this little box required only three francs to be freed from its pitiful surroundings. It was very warm from having been under the sun for hours, and it seemed all the more brittle as its lid rattled against its body while, for only a short time, I cradled it around in its crumpled fragment of newspaper. For the remainder of the day, and of course for the rest of my life, I was accompanied by a familiar feeling (and a relentless grin) of greedy satisfaction: one that follows along the lines of, ‘Excellent! At such a pathetic price I have snatched up a fortune of undervalued design and of unique, timeless taste - and it is mine, mine, mine forever! No one else may have it!’ To anyone other than the accustomed market dweller whose eyes constantly peruse even the darkest, dirtiest of corners for potential lost treasures, my thoughts undoubtedly seem irrational and a bit immature.
Let it be argued, however, that it is quite the contrary: that thoughts as mine are equal in ecstatic depth and child-like happiness to those of someone who, for example, savours over and over again the dry smell of uncooked rice; or who loves running their fingers through a dog’s wet, soppy fur; or who hikes as fast and as hard as possible until their leg muscles tingle and burn hottest; or who slowly slides their palms across piano keys or the bark of a tree, back and forth, back and forth, until the skin is nearly numb; or who chews through a piece of olive bread with a steady, stealthy clamp of the jaw so as to taste each little grain of yeast, each bubble of air and each fleshy bit of olive skin as best as they can, almost to know that bite of bread as closely as a friend or a lover. Only those who are selfishly narrow-minded presume foreign feelings as these to be silly and weird, even inhuman, and such people deserve little attention, if at all. Anything that causes even the smallest dosage of guilt, self-disgust, sudden happiness, embarrassment or deep sadness (to name only a few) are moments which give individuals definition. My reaction in finding and taking for my own this porcelain jewel is rather a benign example of a ‘moment’, but it would be crude to assume that it is in any way less impressionable.
