This #porcelainathome:
A baptism gift from to my mum from her godmother: an entire porcelain tea set. *except* for the bonbon box, which my grandfather claimed was still with his estranged sister.

Whenever he was there, he told my mum that that was her due, and when she died (his *sister*), his words to my mum were: “at least you get your bonbon box now.”

#porcelainathome

It was gone. And they’ve never found it.

#porcelainathome

My mum has moved this box, with her baptism gift #porcelainathome, across all her house moves between towns. It’s still wrapped in the newspaper from 1953 (she was baptised in 1952, but her godmother was in the Netherlands at the time.)

It’s the fifth or sixth time she’s opened it, every time only taking out that one precious tea cup.

I love this unopened treasure, which has garnered so many stories despite it never really being used, let alone opened.

#porcelainathome

My mum doesn’t know if her godmother bought it new, or inherited it herself.

Given that it had become ‘the porcelain set without the bonbonièreke’, she wasn’t prone to raising it with her dad...

Stamp from Limoges, so probably hasn’t travelled *that* globally #porcelainathome

ALSO: opening that box (and taking out the one tea-cup), prompted the story of the lace-making proto-factory my grandfather's parents ran (sending out patterns with carefully-measured wire for women at farms to produce the lace) https://twitter.com/onslies/status/1304830358031142913?s=20

My great-grand parents were one of two couples of two brother (Dutch) and two sisters (Belgian) from other sides of the border who got married, agreeing that one couple would live in Flanders, the others in the Netherlands, so they could distribute the business in both countries

My grandfather's family had always been cross-border for generations. It seemed like a logical measure to take.

There is now a museum of lacemaking across the border in the Netherlands which talks a lot about my family's business as well.

but not everything...

Because when my aunt wanted to research the history of lacemaking, she contacted my grandfather's sister, who still had some of the family patterns.

Patterns that had been sent out to local farms for production, and had to be returned the moment a piece was produced. Kept safely

My great-aunt had agreed to welcome my aunt to tak all things lace, enticingly saying she had found some things people hadn't seen for decades.

When my aunt arrived to interview her, she had cut the patterns into pieced: they had to remain a family secret.

Part of me: at those lost records of my family's past, patterns unique to my family I'll never get to see

Part of me: at the protection of those secrets entrusted her by her parents long gone, a secret kept between the blades of those scissors.

Anyway, family histories about unopened porcelain boxes and irretrievably cut-up family patterns: both deeply material and somehow also not.