It started with one piece - a turquoise Le Creuset French oven tucked in the back corner of an estate sale, ignored and unappreciated. Dusty from years of neglect and coated with a thick layer of blackened history, with each scrub and rinse I couldn't help but think of all the stories this dish would tell if it could; all the mealtime memories and holiday gatherings and luncheons and dinner parties during which it played a role. But that pot also gave me more than wandering thoughts; it also (finally!) gave me the opportunity to engage in what I had been, up to that point, studying and researching and writing about only from the theoretical level - the cultural materiality and consumption related activities that revolve around domesticity and food.
If I love anymore more than ingredients, it is the cookware that we use to transform them into meals and the dishes we use to serve them to our friends and family. There is a richness there that I find lacking in disposable dinnerware, paper plates and plastic cups. Even the of solid dishware sets I see become replaceable - with a move, with a marriage, with the end-of-one-season-start-of-another redecorating trends. There is a permanence in vintage kitchenry that calls to me. An heirloom heritage quality of time-tested endurance and appeal.
So that's what I do and why I do it. I collect what I love and salvage from the depths of obscurity what I believe others might love too.
