Added flavour

Image of Arabia salt pot in the shape of a womanOn each of the many house moves I have done the volume of stuff I re-pack has gone down. Things that I have had stored in other peoples houses have been especially vulnerable.  If I haven’t missed it, out it goes. It is a hugely edited collection I live with now. Once it only had to have been made in the 1950s for me to buy it, or so it seemed.

Working in museums has made me realise they are the best places for boxes of things.

Some few things (erm..and many books) have made it through each move.  I am particularly attached to this salt pot.  I found it on a market stall in Hyde near Manchester some 15 years or so years ago.  It talked to me back then, and it still does.

I like anthropomorphic objects.  The ceramic salt mother originally had a smaller son pepper pot.  I would dearly love to find one of those and pair them back up again. She was part of a set called Emilia designed (probably in the 1950s) by Raija Uosikkinen and manufactured by Arabia of Finland.

Arabia were and are makers of supremely nice pots. They excel at plain and tasteful.  And at tasteful decoration.

8 Comments

simon at easyontheeye

Does this mean that anything of yours stuff left in out attic I get to keep?! That Victorian art school revolving life drawing posing table will end up coming through the ceiling soon if we don’t move it! By the way, they just started pulling down the old art school in Sheffield where it came from… including some of the citiy’s finest C20 modern buildings.

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Excactly | shelf appeal

[…] have an abiding affection for items with faces on them.  See a very recent post on the same subject.  This meg cup egg cup is by Donna Wilson, toy knitter woman and rather good […]

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Charlotte

Ah – so that’s what it’s called. I have the butter dish, i knew it was Arabia but not the set

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shelf appeal

Yes, hard to find names and the pieces seem pretty darn rare. Like hen’s teeth.

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Eli Christina Toft

Your cute salt mother is not from Arabia, Finland. She is from Porsgrund Porselen, Norway 🙂 “Madame Condiment Set”.

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