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My Grandmother's Blue Bowl By Sharon H. Nelson

Sharon's article and recipe below speak to the
connection between the functional pots that we
create and the food that we share with family and
friends. With the Canadian Clay Symposium
coming up—on the theme of form, function,
feast—and the PGBC members' exhibition
Dish it Up showing March 7 to April 1, Sharon
reminds us on a more personal level why our pots
and the food they hold are important. Sharon
isn't a member of the PGBC, but we welcome
submissions relating to clay and clay culture
from interested supporters wherever they live.

After

sometimes stormy relations all round, I

my grandmother died, despite
helped my mother sort out what was left of
my grandmother’s household possessions.
‘The basement storage area was cramped and
grimy, and all my grandmother's things would
go to charity anyway; no one in the family
wanted old things. When we were almost
done, my mother picked up my grandmother's
Pesach mixing bowl and inspected it with
a critical look familiar to me. Almost as an
afterthought, it seemed, she held the bowl out
towards me, her eyebrows raised. Would I use
it? Of course.

My grandmother's blue bowl is the bowl
that I’ve reached for almost daily for decades.
It is the bowl into which I slice peaches or
apples for cakes and crisps and cobblers,
and fruit for fruit salad; in which I mix the
dough for mohn cookies and cheese pies and
verenikes and mandel brott; where vegetables

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9548 192 Street,
Surrey, B.C. VAN 3R9
Phone: 604.888.3411
Fax: 604.888.4247

ean Darn

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Photo by Peter Grogono.

—raw and cooked — are dressed and tossed and
turned into .. . something interesting. It is the
alchemist’s bowl, in which experiments with
texture and flavour take place, and in which
memories mingle, as each cook and. baker,
aunt and bobba, is made present in her own
particular recipe or technique.

Until I started writing about it, I never
wondered about the provenance of my
grandmother’s blue bowl. It was just there,
a presence in my kitchen, used so frequently
that it’s placed on the shelf 1 most easily reach.
My grandmothers blue bowl, it turns out,
was made in England by T.D. Green and Co.
between 1900 and 1910. It is now, therefore, a
genuine antique. From its age and provenance,
I surmise that my grandmother brought
the bowl with her from England when, as a
young woman, she emigrated to Canada with
the father who had carried her as an infant
from Odessa to Salonika, and then via Paris to
London. Bubbie Lily, as she became, used this
bowl every year for more than half a century
as she prepared for Passover, a holiday that
celebrates emigration.

My grandmother’s blue bowl is perfectly
proportioned and shaped for its purpose, with
a very high glaze that insures that nothing
sticks to it. It carries in its interior brightness
and light. In reality, though, the bowl I think

Continued on Page 6,
Mandel Brott Recipe

Potters Guild of BC Newsletter - February 2013