03/20/2025
I purchased this 1800’s crystal fruit bowl at a farm yard sale outside of Siren, Wisconsin in 1996. The bowl is heavy crystal that sounds like a bell when tapped. A sound that lingers and echoes its beauty long after the tap. It’s large enough to hold 8-10 apples or oranges. When I approached the rows of tables that displayed the sale items in front of a large weathered barn, an elderly woman stood behind a table filled with glassware odds and ends. I saw the fruit bowl right away and picked it up. Impressed by its weight and design, I asked what she might know about it. "It was my grandmother's fruit bowl" she explained. "Always brimming with apples and peaches, it sat on our kitchen table my whole childhood. I’m 82 now so the bowl is well over 100 years old." I asked her a question that I have asked a hundred other times when purchasing family treasures. “Why would you sell it when you have such lovely memories of it?” Usually sellers at yard sales hope you don’t notice the flaws in something that has your interest. A chip on the edge of a vase. A dent in a silver tea pot, or a repair in a painting. But, this woman took the bowl from my hands to show me the damage. A small hole in the side of the bowl. A hole with shatter marks like sunbeams. I looked at her puzzled. “How did that happen”? She laughed. “My grandfather was cleaning his rifle while sitting at the dining room table and he didn’t know the gun was loaded. It went off and blasted into the kitchen and hit my grandmother’s favourite bowl.” I couldn't believe it hadn’t shattered completely. When I doubted her, she responded. “We had an apple orchard in those days. There was probably a dozen apples piled high in the bowl that absorbed the blast. All that remained to show the shot was this hole.” I tried to talk her out of selling it because I loved the story so much, but she assured me she had too many family treasures and didn’t need to keep that one.
$5.00.
I have bought and sold many antique fruit bowls, but this one stays with me because I get to tell its story over and over...
