The future mosaic

We tolerate a chipped mug in this house. Chipped plates, bowls and ovenware also pass muster. When things break into more than two pieces however, it is usually time to replace them. It has been a mixed year for pottery in this house. Above are a few charity shop wins - a stoneware biscuit barrel (£2.00), a salt pig (£2.50) and one of two Mason Cash no 24 pudding basins (£1.50 the pair), all picked up over the last few months. Much of my life is furnished with secondhand stuff and it isn't slim pickings. I usually manage to find beautiful, useful or salvageable things even in our tiny local charity shop.

The losses began with a near death experience in early December. The kitchen crockery cupboard launched itself from the wall, tumbling the full 2 metre width of the kitchen. It dented the sink, sheared the oven door off and glanced my elbow. The casualties were surpsingly few, no humans thankfully, but all the other good bits - the 'forever' pottery, were lost. One of a pair of Hornsea salad bowls we inherited when we moved into our first flat together. The beautiful blue pouring bowl we dug out of the seconds at Made in Cley on holiday. The cheap tide-us-over ugly mugs remained (of course!) chipped but intact. One day later, the other Hornsea bowl met with a freak accident of its own.

Fast forward to the beginning of January. There is a beautiful blue pie dish, a gift to me from my beloved and also rescued from the seconds basket of a potter, this time in Derbyshire. The beautiful pie dish is on the kitchen side, the remainder of the christmas nuts contained within. Also in this house is a cat. This adorable but dizzy/disobedient cat has a habit of getting up onto the worktop and on this particular day in January, launched herself at the worktop, skidded across the worktop and off of the other side, taking the pie dish with her. Nice crocks, won't you agree?:

Finally (at least I hope so) the  deep stoneware casserole dish cracked as it came out of the oven last week. This was particularly annoying as just the week previously I had been admiring the nicely seasoned finish I had managed to build up with my diehard lasagne habit - deep dish lasagne, a revelation! This was another seconds that was in turn gifted to us - secondhand seconds - and we really can't complain after a solid two years of use can we?

I priced up a little shopping spree to buy brand new replacements and realised just how good we have had  it all of these years on cast-offs, seconds and hand me downs. Reaaallllly good.

I now have quite the hoard of pretty, coordinating, broken crockery pieces, so expect a mosaic project at some point in the future, when I have finished mourning my losses.