China
I am drawn to the beautiful yet rather obsolete nature of antique china, much of which sits in boxes in my basement. Lovingly curated by each generation of women that came before me, each set was picked to represent their tastes, a reflection of the life they aspired to create as they began their adult life. The pieces we do use today are largely chipped and broken, and I enjoy the metaphor of this for the legacy of gender roles handed down by our mothers, grandmothers, and so on. The rituals of china being used for formal meals have become somewhat abandoned, and yet I can't part with them. They are both treasured and impractical.