Will gaudy yellow Easter knick-knacks be our legacy?
Whenever I visit the British Museum, the Ashmolean or the Pitt Rivers, I find myself marvelling not just at the beauty of the objects in their collections but at the astonishing resilience of these things – their will, in effect, to live.
The fragile beakers of iridescent Roman glass, the astounding Macedonian wreath – a miniature forest of acorns and oak leaves, made of beaten gold and trembling as in a summer breeze – the silvered glass bottle, stoppered with sealing wax and rumoured to contain a witch; how have they survived?
They have endured not just the convulsions of history but (arguably more devastating) the hazards of everyday life: the butterfingered washer-up, the inquisitive child, the expansive gesture that takes out an entire shelf-full of frangible tchotchkes.
In our house the crash and tinkle of expiring objects is a familiar leitmotif. “Yet again,” said my son bitterly one dismal Christmas morning, “I have been woken by the sound of smashing and weeping.” On that occasion it was a 19th century Spode coffee pot: a junk-shop treasure whose demise was all the more bitter because some previous owner had loved it enough to have its broken spout carefully riveted.
The accidental death of a beloved personal object is a source of lasting regret. But a discussion on the website of the Institute of Conservation (Icon) explores the issue of when objects can be said to “die”, and what the criteria are for declaring them defunct. To conservators, the shattering of some priceless treasure into a zillion pieces is not an end but a beginning.
Penny Bendall, who undertook the repair of three Qing dynasty vases pulverised in 2006 when a hapless visitor to the Fitzwilliam Museum tripped over his shoelaces, described the mending process as “very routine”. Nevertheless, the Icon discussion concludes that some objects eventually have to be considered “beyond salvation: usually those that already contain an element of inherent vice that precludes any longterm stability”.
The use of the term “vice” in this context is technical rather than moral. Still, a recent news story made me wonder if a more general application might not have its uses. Easter, The Daily Telegraph reports, has become the new Christmas, with the traditional hotcross buns and chocolate eggs extinguished beneath an avalanche of Paschal knick-knacks.
Sure enough, my local supermarket has become an obstacle course of bright yellow: chick-shaped egg buckets, beady-eyed chicks lurking in glittery nests, chick- and egg-strewn Easter crackers, and some thoroughly sinister chick toys that cheep when you cup them in your hand – the latter irresistibly recalling the anguished chirping of the 1,800 day-old chicks dumped last month in a freezing Peterborough field.
Why anyone would want to spend good money on these ineffable gewgaws is a mystery. After all, if you want Easter decorations, the pussy willow is blooming in the hedgerows, and the old Russian custom of painting eggs ticks almost every current virtue box: creative, vegetarian, additive-free and – if you use free-range eggs and eat them afterwards – entirely sustainable.
As for the tidal wave of indestructible plastic Easter trash, I wonder what lessons future conservators will draw from it about the culture of the 21st century. Inherent vice may be the least of it.