Tchotchke City
It's hard to live a tchotchke free life, but I tried to take the anti-tchotchke vow and join tchotchke-lovers anonymous when I moved to a city that boasted a number of franchised upscale tchotchke stores called "Bibelot." But first, no one knew what tchotchke meant because Minneapolis is Yiddish challenged and second, there are no support groups for those of us recovering from tchotchke love.
So despite my best resolve, tchotchkes kept slipping into my life. I thought my apartment was a tchotchke free zone, but how could I throw away that silver plated pill box that X gave me for my birthday? Or what about the crystal candy dish shaped like a lilypad? I was the owner of lonely tchotchkes because I was holding back on tchotchke acquisitiveness, and had placed a cordon sanitaire around my apartment. Bibelot is French and means basically the same thing as tchotchke, that is -- useless decorative item placed nonchalantly around the bourgeois home. Bibelot aspires to something more sophisticated: the eponymous store certainly carried many ambitious tchotchkes, straining to be tasteful, that is untchotchke-like in their restrained and self-conscious handsomeness. The miniature Zen rock garden with the tiny rake or tabletop bubbling spring is a good example of this new, preening tchotchke.
And you had to have those adorable little bud vases for those special moments when you decided to pretend that you lived in a B&B and served yourself a breakfast of freshly baked scones on a tray adorned with cloth napkin and -- bud vases, each holding a perfect bud.
A tchotchke can be any function-free thing collected over the years, accumulating dust on your bookshelf. They are the stuff of our grandmothers' generation, the grotesquely humble and beloved objects of aspiring lower middle class families across the world. One of my favorites dates from the days of Old Communism in China, and could be found in the homes of up and coming comrades. We called them cats under glass, but they were basically little cats made of bits of rabbit fur, glued to plates covered by a glass bubble so that you could never hope to eat off this item. Yiddish in origin, this word has travelled far and wide to express the tragicomic outcome of pinning all our hopes for a better and more authentic life on a Lladro figurine of a dreamy shepherdess, on the iron trivet in the shape of a turtle, on the pastoral scene carved on a walnut, on the tiny copper milk jug filled with dried flowers.
So despite my best resolve, tchotchkes kept slipping into my life. I thought my apartment was a tchotchke free zone, but how could I throw away that silver plated pill box that X gave me for my birthday? Or what about the crystal candy dish shaped like a lilypad? I was the owner of lonely tchotchkes because I was holding back on tchotchke acquisitiveness, and had placed a cordon sanitaire around my apartment. Bibelot is French and means basically the same thing as tchotchke, that is -- useless decorative item placed nonchalantly around the bourgeois home. Bibelot aspires to something more sophisticated: the eponymous store certainly carried many ambitious tchotchkes, straining to be tasteful, that is untchotchke-like in their restrained and self-conscious handsomeness. The miniature Zen rock garden with the tiny rake or tabletop bubbling spring is a good example of this new, preening tchotchke.
And you had to have those adorable little bud vases for those special moments when you decided to pretend that you lived in a B&B and served yourself a breakfast of freshly baked scones on a tray adorned with cloth napkin and -- bud vases, each holding a perfect bud.
A tchotchke can be any function-free thing collected over the years, accumulating dust on your bookshelf. They are the stuff of our grandmothers' generation, the grotesquely humble and beloved objects of aspiring lower middle class families across the world. One of my favorites dates from the days of Old Communism in China, and could be found in the homes of up and coming comrades. We called them cats under glass, but they were basically little cats made of bits of rabbit fur, glued to plates covered by a glass bubble so that you could never hope to eat off this item. Yiddish in origin, this word has travelled far and wide to express the tragicomic outcome of pinning all our hopes for a better and more authentic life on a Lladro figurine of a dreamy shepherdess, on the iron trivet in the shape of a turtle, on the pastoral scene carved on a walnut, on the tiny copper milk jug filled with dried flowers.
1 Comments:
Hello Don't Ask Me!
There's so much to read and then THINK ABOUT from your blog, I can only take on a little at a time.
Tonight was tchotchke night. Recently I also took the tchotchke-free vow. Very difficult, after all those years and all the heirloom hand-me downs from generations of family from the Old Country. Do you really think the addiction is limited to the lower classes? Isn't it simply that the wealthy have more expensive tchotchkes? Or perhaps because of the expense and taste involved the items are considered essentials of the lifestyle. Do you actually know anyone who is tchotchke-free? And do you know of other specifics from other cultures? Research could be done! And produced as a coffee table book!! Isn't everything on a coffee table, by definition, a tchotchke? What a curious topic of interest and thought. I applaud your discerning intellect, and insight into the cultural aspects of tschotchkes. Truly.
Post a Comment
<< Home