A Broken Present

On chips, cracks, and sweet imperfections

Our kitchen cabinets hold objects that bear witness to our lives: pots that have simmered our successes and failures, forks that have fed our dearest friends, spoons brought back from adventure and travel, knives that have cut through tough and tender times, bowls passed down, hand to hand, for generations, plates that have held nourishment for our bodies and spirits.

Even our most ordinary, everyday cookware and tableware has a particularly intimate relationship to our lives, holding memories and stories of times shared and times alone.

When I look at this pink and gold cup in the Anchorage Museum collection, I wonder about the lives it witnessed: whose lips sipped from this cup? What stories were shared over its steaming rim?

The white, ceramic small cup is glazed in pink, lavender, and gold. On the face of the cup, a raised petalled flower with a green leaf jauntily springs up. Beside the blossom is a gold dappled banner which reads “A Present” in sans serif script. A looped handle seems just the size to slip an index finger through to raise it to the lips. But beware from where you sip—the rim of the cup is chipped and jagged, an undeniable chunk of ceramic missing.

I think it is this teacup’s brokenness that fascinates me. The chipped rim feels like a clue. Broken things are often discarded, replaced. And yet, here this teacup is, in a museum collection. Chipped but kept, this cup was not only used, but perhaps even dearly loved. It must have felt important to keep, important to preserve, to whoever owned it and donated it.

Not much information came with this object to the museum. We do know that it was donated in the 1960s by Pioneers of Alaska, an Anchorage branch of a fraternal organization founded in Nome in 1917. Igloo #15 is still operational today. A stamp on the bottom offers a fragment more: Made in Germany. A quick internet search of pink + gold + teacup + German + present reveals many “cousins” of this cup.

This array of related looking objects are all Victorian souvenirs. Produced in Germany mostly for the English market, these shiny, lustreware cups were sold widely and affordably at destination hotels and shops for visitors to bring home to loved ones. Various painted banners read “A gift” or “Forget-me-not,” or, my favorite, “Love the Giver.”

In this sea of gold, white, and pink specimens posted by sellers in “like new condition,” our humble cup does not reveal itself to be particularly special or valuable. Yet, are not our own cabinets full of broken things? Dented pots, bent fork tines, tarnished spoons, dulled knives, and scuffed bowls and plates—each ding and crack hints at the life these objects have shared with us, clues to our own stories, experiences, challenges, triumphs, loves, and losses.

While the past of this teacup is a mystery, perhaps it is still a kind of gift for us today. This modest teacup invites us to value our broken things, and perhaps the chipped and cracked parts of ourselves. Imperfections inscribe the many memories and moments, wondrous, challenging, and fragile, that make up our lives, and make us who we are, in the present.

This story originally appeared in Issue No. 27, Spring 2023