Grandma Clara's Tea Cups

When my grandmother passed away a few years ago, my dad and his sisters decided that even though they didn't want to do it, they had to sell my grandma's house. This was the house she spent 86 of her 89 years in. She lived there as a child, moved out for three years when she and my grandpa got married, then returned to help take care of her father after her mom passed away. When my great-grandpa died a year or two later, Grandma and Grandpa stayed in that house and raised their own family there.

Needless to say, there was a LOT of stuff in that house. Stuff I had no idea Grandma even had or liked. One of the biggest surprises for me was her tea cups. Apparently Grandma collected them. Who knew? Well, maybe my cousins knew. I'm part of a HUGE family, and ever since my parent's divorce when I was in the third grade, I have spent relatively little time with that part of my family. I'm a pretty shy person, and in my giant family, I tend to try to blend in. I'm one of the youngest of 21 grandkids. Most of my cousins have kids...the oldest is just 6 or 7 years younger than I am.

Back to Grandma's tea cups. When my dad and the aunts and uncles were going through Grandma's stuff, they made sure that all of the 21 grandkids each got something from her house. I'm not sure what my sisters got at first, but my dad gave me a pretty copper tea kettle that was still in the box. I don't think he understood my mom when she told him to make sure he got each of us something from her house to remember her by. What she meant was that we should get an item that screams "I belonged to your Grandma Clara for a million years! Every time you use me or look at me, you will think of her fondly!"

Items like her ugly picture frames that sat on the console in the living room for fifty years. The afghan that rested on the back of the couch for as long as anyone can remember. The sentimental stuff. Not the stuff that was so new it was still in the box and she hardly had a chance to use it before she passed.

Once he understood that, Dad was really good about finding my sisters and I special items. So good, in fact, that I have a LOT of my Grandma's stuff now. A super cool, retro funky orange and green opalescent tea set. Six tacky juice glasses with gold leaf on them. Six pretty soup bowls that I use on practically a daily basis. The coolest lamp on the face of the planet (I'll post pictures at some point. That lamp is worthy of a post of its own. If Antiques Roadshow is ever in the Pacific Northwest, my sister-in-law and I are taking it and a Majolica box she got from her grandma.) A few tea cups. And, of course, the copper tea kettle.

Because Dad gave me the green and orange tea set, I told my sisters they could split up the 13 tea cups and saucers. They said that I could pick one, and then they would split the others. Because I am the only one with storage space right now (T lives with our mom, and L lives in Vegas for the time being), we labeled them all, and packed them into a box for me to bring home. Normally I am not a tea cup sort of girl. My MIL and both SIL are, though, so one time when Mom and Dad H were visiting, I had J pull down the box from the shelf in the garage so I could show them to Mom. She liked them so much, she wanted to take pictures of them so she could paint them for one of her upcoming art shows.

I was so touched. At first I thought she was just being nice, but a few months later, when we went to visit them, she had a present for me. She had framed prints of the three tea cups she painted for me. It was one of the coolest gifts I've ever received. (Oh!! The cookbook I got from her when J and I got married is another one of the coolest gifts! I'll have to do a post about that soon, too.) She told me I could do whatever I wanted with the prints, and that if I didn't want them, she wouldn't be offended. She doesn't like to force her artwork on anyone. You've got to be kidding me. If I had a fourth of the talent she has, I'd be showing my artwork to everyone I could! I'm considering giving my sisters each one of the prints, but I don't know if I want to part with them! Perhaps I'll ask Mom H. for two more sets of the prints, and I'll frame them for gifts for my sisters.


Here are the pictures of the tea cups.

Here are scans of the prints she gave me. They are amazing. They are almost better than the photographs. Her artwork is photo-realistic. And it's so good, it's hard to believe it's oil pastel and not a photograph.