OBJECTivity // The Broken Bowl

My relationship with objects was defined at any early age by paternal grandmother, Rhoda Grace Manoogian. She was born in Aleppo, to an Armenian father (Sisag) and a Anatolian Greek mother (Marika), both refugees who had recently escaped the deportations into Deir-ez-Zor desert. Her father had survived multiple direct attacks on his life and, still under threat, would often need to hide in the attic of their rented house. Possessions were few, food was scarce. Sisag wrote a diary, in Armeno-Turkish (a version of Armenian script in the Ottoman Turkish language). After his death, in 1945, Marika translated and edited these diaries into a book for future generations to read.

They were an itinerant family. Even before the Armenian genocide, my great-grandfather travelled by horse between Kayseri, Urgup, Neveshir, Adana. Later, in Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, and for a year or so in England, where their twin girls were born. Moving from place to place, objects became significant because of their scarcity. Each object had a story. Each object was a treasure. When you lose your home and your land, the objects which connect you to the place you once belonged take on a value that surpasses the objective worth.

I count it an honour to have some of these objects and to pass on the stories to others.

That said, I am a terrible keeper of this collection!

In O Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis in Porto, where I currently live, hangs this painting. A tigela partida – The broken bowl (António da Silva Porto, 1850-1893), 1877-1878. So often I feel like this girl in relation to objects that I should have cared for. I don’t exaggerate when I say, it fills me with guilt and shame when I think of the multiple broken ‘bowls’ throughout my life.

When I was very little my grandmother gifted me a small, cream leather writing case. About the size of a laptop, with a single brass clasp lock it opened up to reveal a red silk interior. The lower level was topped with a blotter board held in place either side by leather trim. The upper level had pockets, which my grandmother had filled with handmade notebooks, envelopes and other delights which I scribbled all over and discarded well before I’d reached the age of eight years old! I can picture them, and I enjoyed writing on this diminutive stationery, but sadly they are no longer there. I regret this… but over time I’ve released myself from feeling bad about this ‘broken bowl’. Likewise, with other objects I have lost, or chipped, or given away and then wished I hadn’t. I still have the case, and I plan to fill it with small booklets and envelopes that I will make using the photos my grandmother gave to me.

I am thankful for a very good visual and sensory memory. I am not sure what happened to a much-loved, giant book called The World. It had a double-page spread of photos for each country on planet earth, and, four decades later I can blink and picture the page for China, Argentina, South Africa etc etc, as if I were still lying on the floor, elbows on the carpet, chin resting on my fists, age five or six years old, amazed that these places existed. In my mind I can also move around the windowsills and tables of my grandmother’s house, seat myself in a chair, or at the piano and position the objects around me. The first half of her life was characterised by living between places, the second half she lived in the same house. She found a place for every item she owned, and it stayed there. Anything of significance to her had a handwritten note attached to it. It was a museum house. Her typewriter was how she travelled, each day, typing letters to her family and friends, scattered in different cities and countries. She would walk to the post office and make copies of cuttings and photographs, paperclip them to the letters and send them off in the post. Sharing stories was what she did. Preserving objects connected her to the past and cooking was an important part of this too. It was deeply nostalgic, and only now am I learning to view these objects and stories with more objectivity. Two visits to Lebanon helped with this. I wanted to see places that were captured in photos and in stories. I wanted context for the objects I had been entrusted with. I wanted these to be my experience, for it not to be about treasures or burdens from the past, but for these objects to spur me to live abundantly here and now.

So, here’s to less nostalgia, and more OBJECTivity!