I have some treasured heirlooms

My Mum's breadboard is very special, among other things, but I use it everyday. It was carved for her by someone in the village where she grew up in Edlesborough for her 21st birthday. Mum would have been 100 last December. I think of her using it at our hill farm in mid Wales feeding our extended family and all the B&B visitors who came to stay. Anyone with memories of "Mrs Jones, Bronprys" I would be delighted to hear from you. That breadboard, and our old visitors books too, are a host of memories of the lovely people who became kind friends through their holidays over the years.

Whitewavemark2 - a banda machine was a spirit duplicate. In the 60s, 70s all duplication in schools smelt of the alcohol used.
You used to hand write or type out what you wanted to duplicate on a special carbon, and then hook it onto the drum, fill the machine with white spirit and rotate

My treasures don't go too far back; only to my parents and in-laws generations.

I have my parents bowls from Quimper pottery purchased on their honeymoon, and a silver-plate serving spoon that I think was a wedding gift. It's very ornate and has a strange engraved three-legged image, which after some research may originate from Manx. Lord knows how they received that!

And of course I treasure my own Teddy, even though he is worse for wear and stored in a box in the attic.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202008/medium-250341-20200808-160129.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202008/medium-466234-20200808-160108.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202008/medium-949716-20200808-160154.jpg

Luckylegs

I haven’t read the whole five pages but I have never heard of Motto ware?

Three of my favourite bits of motto ware. The 'dialect' jug was the one we found in MIL's house. I go for the homily mostly!

They are sometimes called Watcombe or Devon pottery. They are earthenware and chip really easily. I have tons more.

A lovely thread,and a very interesting one too.Hopefully all the things you hold dear will be passed onto family for the future.
If you have old photographs....definitely try to put the date and the person’s name on the back, much more interesting for your AC or DGC than seeing a pic of a nameless man or woman in old fashioned clobber on the pier somewhere.

Spangler

Did I spell brac as bras, I can't believe that.

You were still happily thinking about what day it is today.?

Did I spell brac as bras, I can't believe that.

Spangler love the typo "bric-a-bras"

"Happysexagenarian Fri 07-Aug-20 13:01:40 There is a sewing machine dating website where you can enter the serial number of your machine and find out when it was made, mine was 1904."

Thank you very much, what a useful tip. The carpenter made some display shelves for her sewing machine collection, they look most impressive, much to the delight of the sewing machine fellow who services her modern machines.

At vintage fairs, festivals and the places where you can find all sorts of bric-a-bras, old sewing machines are priced in the hundreds of pounds. Go into a charity shop and chances are the same model of machine is priced at about twenty pounds, probably brought in from the sort of house clearance others have described.

Spangler Your wife's sewing machine sounds exactly like mine, a black and gold Singer on a wòoden base with drawers. I hope your wife still uses it. Mine was a wedding present to my GM from her mother in 1910. Some of the gilding is wearing on it now but it still works perfectly and I still use it for 'heavy duty' sewing eg leather. There's something special about turning the handwheel and the sound it makes as you sew. Those machines are also ideal for teaching a child to sew as it can't run away with them! There is a sewing machine dating website where you can enter the serial number of your machine and find out when it was made, mine was 1904.

I haven’t read the whole five pages but I have never heard of Motto ware?

After my father died, eventually my mother went into a home and we sold her house. The loft was packed full of stuff and also the garage. Love letters between the two of them were bundled up, I didn't read them and in fact destroyed them Somehow it seemed to be intrusive.

My father had kept the bill for the second hand 3 piece suite they bought in 1946 and which they somehow carried home. He also had the bill for its re-upholstery. He'd also kept wage slips from his earliest employment at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, which I think still exists. And much, much more besides, including my ID card which I still have.

In the garage there were old saws belonging to his father. My other half still uses them - much better quality than today's apparently. Also other tools and equipment, some old scientific instruments from my grandfather which I still have. Solid, had made from brass with ground glass lenses etc. Also some lovely wooden shapes for technical drawing.

My father had cut down the settee from the 3 piece suite and we were given the 3 armchairs when we moved into our first joint home together. We then had them recovered when our fist house was renovated. They are bergeres with cane sides which over the years had been ruined by various dogs laying on the chairs and then spreading themselves. They have since been re-caned. I passed one chair on to some friends who had always admired them and the other two are awaiting recovering. I bought the fabric about 20 years ago and it's still waiting to be used.

We gave most of the furniture to a charity who either sold it or gave it to homeless people who were being re- homed.

I was sad having to get rid of so much personal stuff but we too am a great accumulators and at some point will have to sell much of our collections if and when we downsize.

One of our friends is an artist and so there are lots of his work in their home. Plus they are avid collectors. Their eldest son, when he visits, is always telling them to get rid of stuff and to stop buying things. They furnished a holiday home in France, mainly from Emmaus, and did very well. She has an enormous stash of old cooking pots and pottery, the kind with flowers on and they managed to accommodate all the small things when they sold the French house and bought a second home in Suffolk.

So much stuff that the immediate families of most people just don't want. It's very sad.

I have kept postcards sent to me by my son when he was 6 and had gone on holiday with his grandparents - first time away from home. I have passed on to his wife the jewellery passed to me from DH's mother (which had been in the paternal line from a long time) , and a beautiful scarf/stole from my mother.

Happysexagenarian Thu 06-Aug-20 18:34:31
I have so many things:
A few pieces of furniture
My GM sewing machine (on which she taught me to sew) and reels of thread that are over 100 years old
Silver thimbles, needle cases and embroidery scissors, and a darning mushroom. All of which I use.

You have reminded me that my wife has so much in the way of home dressmaking. She has a cabin and pride of place is her grandmother's Singer. It's late 19th century, at least I think it is, hand operated and the bobbin is bullet shaped. It oscillates back and forth and makes a racket, but it still works perfectly.

Memories. Something that you cannot lose!
Have letters from my Uncle to my Grandmother when he was in the Army WW 11.
Each letter asks after me by name whom he had never met.
Unfortunately he never came home.

My DH’s home was blasted by a near-miss bomb, in 1941, when he was 8. He was overjoyed to find that his special cup was one of the few things left undamaged. It has since survived all the everyday risks of life, and outlived it’s owner.

I have various items passed down through the generations from both mine and my husbands family however, we are the last of the generations, so after our days it will be lost. When my parents died, within 3 months of each other, I didn't know what to do with their wedding rings. Fast forward 2 years and I had them melted down and made into a dove pendant which I constantly wear. A wonderful reminder of them both, together forever.

A little book written by my GGF when he was a young journalist in Edinburgh. It gives advice for people emigrating to America which I am sure he never visited though he had done lots of research. On one page he writes very strongly against the evils of slavery.

My sister died last week and some relatives sorted through some of her possessions and threw them out. I am so upset and angry as I valued them in an emotional way. I even rummaged through her dustbins Afterwards to retrieve her things. What one person considers rubbish another values highly. ☹️

Dinahmo

kittylester sadly it's the fashion which is a great shame. I have a set of fish knives and forks silver with either bone or ivory, not sure which. They were my grandmother's and I've used them once. They look nice but it's the cleaning. The younger generations don't have the time or inclination.

I have a set too and the matching servers in a different box.

They're not worth much and I never use them. But they are not mine to dispose of as they were MIL's.

I have so many things:
A few pieces of furniture
My GM sewing machine (on which she taught me to sew) and reels of thread that are over 100 years old
Silver thimbles, needle cases and embroidery scissors, and a darning mushroom. All of which I use.
My GM Book of Household Management by Mrs Beeton, falling apart now but containing so many handwritten notes and recipes and I love to see her pretty handwriting
Cream suede and leather spats my GF wore on his wedding day in 1910
2 Albums of photos of my maternal GM family which includes my great great GM. Fortunately I know who most of the people are and when and where they were taken
Wooden Butter Pats that were my great GMs
Lots of pieces of jewellery, not of great monetary value but very pretty.

But my most treasured possessions are a letter from my mother to a relative a few days after I was born in which she says how tiny I was and how sweet. I was born 2 months early and weighed just over 2lbs. I had not been given a name yet. My mother died a week later.

My other treasured posession is a 3rd birthday card from my father. I was not brought up by my father who died when I was eleven. I never saw the card until after my 'adoptive' mother died twenty years ago. I'm sure Dad would have sent other cards but she didn't keep them.

I have put notes with many things explaining what they are and why I kept them as they will have no significance for my sons, though I doubt that they will want them anyway. They are my memories not theirs.

kittylester sadly it's the fashion which is a great shame. I have a set of fish knives and forks silver with either bone or ivory, not sure which. They were my grandmother's and I've used them once. They look nice but it's the cleaning. The younger generations don't have the time or inclination.

I would have paid double to keep Granny's clock going, dinahmo but was shocked to find how the value had dropped in the 30 years or so since Mum had it valued.

kittylester

It's the small things I cherish. A silver match book cover with my initials of my father's aunt. A very pretty seconds coffee pot that was my nan's pride and joy.

Not so small is the 'grandfather clock' which was in my granny's house, then my parent's and now mine. It's actually a grandmother clock and very plain but the tick and the chimes are really homely. We just had it cleaned and refurbished which cost in the hundred's of pounds and when we asked the clock man how much it was worth, he said about what you just paid.

We also have letters from fil to mil and from my Poppa to my nan during WW1.

My OH used to be a furniture restorer but working on museum quality pieces. The hourly rate charged would be similar if repairing a simple clock or a valuable one. We often watch that programme "The Repair Workshop"? and often wonder what the people whose pieces are repaired if they knew the actual cost in time. I suspect that most of them wouldn't have the work done.

I have the cream silk shoes my Grandma wore on her wedding day in 1922. They are TINY - a child would have trouble squeezing into them now. I also inherited a miniature dolly tub and mangle, complete with a line and teeny wooden pegs, which my Mum was given when she was recuperating from pneumonia around 1932