Thinking today about when you look through other people’s things, what do you learn about the person? Thinking right now about Grammy Carter’s box full of lace collars, and her box of ribbons (in a tangle...) and her other distinctly labeled boxes with bits and pieces of clothing that she might have had either to make over for someone or for herself or her mother or her daughter...
When Michele helped me go through the studio last year...we spent a whole day at it...we ran across a box that was labeled “felt scraps.” We tossed the scraps, kept the box.
The story behind the story: during the Depression, a man came door to door selling felt letters, you know like sports letters or college letters. My grandmother convinced him to give her the scraps from cutting out the letters, and so she had little pieces of felt for Mom to play with and for whatever uses one puts little scraps of felt.
So this box of felt scraps from the 30s was not just a box of felt scraps...it had a story, too, and whatever you choose to pin on it for a moral. It’s not just a box of felt scraps saved for 70 years...it's connected to a man eke-ing out a living, a mother entertaining her daughter, maybe teaching her to sew, and a little girl making playthings.
The story’s a much better souvenir than the box of felt scraps.
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