Hallie Watson

Quail Eggs - SOLD

Quail eggs are special. They're small and precious, spotted to camouflage them from marauders. Though they are offered to us as a grocery item, I think that they are too special to eat. When I was young, we would go to our farm in the country every weekend. I would play with my friend Carol whose mother had come from England after the war, bringing a special cabinet with her. It had about a dozen small drawers which, when opened, revealed compartmentalized trays. Each compartment was carefully lined with cotton wool as a nest for one or more wild bird eggs. The cabinet was her bird egg collection. I loved to open each drawer and marvel at the eggs- big duck eggs to tiny sparrow eggs. They were each marvellous and magical.

Lexi’s Sofa - SOLD
   It was summer. Young Lexi lay on the sofa having an afternoon nap. She could hear her mother and her grandmother talking in the next room. In her half awakeness, their voices mingled gently with the leaves swishing outside in the summer wind. There were bird sounds far away. Her cheek made an impression on the down cushion.

   Now, when she looks at the sofa, what matters most is not the wonderful carving on the back of the sofa, or the S curve of it’s shape. It is the gentle whisper of leaves mixed with the voices of her mother and grandmother, heard in the half sleep of a small girl on a summer afternoon.

Place Setting - SOLD

   My Dad gave my Mum a grandmother clock when they got married. It is a pretty thing, hand painted with flowers down the front, dinging at the hour and at the half hour. For my whole life it set the pace for the domestic routine without stopping.

   Before she went to bed, my mother would set the table for breakfast. We would all get up the next morning at the same time, have breakfast and go off to work and school. At the end of the day, I'd come home and Mummy would be setting the table for dinner. She always set it at four thirty. There was a prescribed way to do this- the serving spoons here, the hot mats here. The glasses and silverware always this way.

   The placemats changed from day to day. They were pulled from a large collection handed down from my grandmother and probably her mother. They were lacy, plain, coloured, hand embroidered, tatted and crocheted, and from every country anybody in the family had ever been to. With them went the napkins carefully ironed and folded.

   It was beautiful. The silver cleaned, the lacy patterned mats contrasting with the dark polished wood. The glasses shone. I always thought that setting the table in the afternoon was way too early for a dinner which wasn't produced until eight, but the routine was a structure that the household hung on - reliable and comforting. The clock dinged every half hour, and life was as it should be.

   Having dinner was an old world arrangement. My parents dressed for dinner. My father put on dinner music. I had long ago had my supper and was working on my homework. There was conversation.

   After dinner my Mum did the dishes and set the table for breakfast. Every single day. Except when they went out for dinner and dancing which was always on Thursday night.

Plate, Spoon and Napkin

Plate,Spoon and Napkin, January 29,2005
Oil pastel on paper, texted sintra
13.75” x 19.5”
Jan. 29, 2005

How wonderful that a cryptic mark on the bottom of our soup bowls could say so much. They were made on September 19, 1871. William Morris was creating his designs from nature. Darwin had published his Origin of Species only twelve years earlier. Whistler had just painted his mother.

In 1871 I would have worn a corset laced up tight. On top of that, a bustle- a wire framework that made a kind of shelf out the back. On top of that the petticoat and then layers of the dress itself. My feet would not show. Certainly not my legs.

Here I am now. The bowls are still the same. The soup has probably improved ( it is Szechwan carrot soup) and I am luxuriously corsetless.

Sherry - SOLD

   I never drank sherry except when I went to my Nana's for lunch. She kept the bottle in a wonderful cabinet that my grandfather brought back from Europe after the First World War. She would pour the beautiful amber liquid into a crystal glass and we would sink into the down filled sofa cushions and talk and laugh and relax and get a little elevated and then repair to the dining room table to have lunch. It was very pleasant.

Standard Lamp - SOLD

   After my grandmother built her rather grand house in Forest Hill, she had a decorator come in and help her with the interior. The house had a definite Spanish flavour, inspired by houses that my grandmother had seen in Panama. Inside, there was a curving staircase, a good deal of wrought iron and stuccoed walls.

   The decorator’s name was Minerva Elliot. Even now her name drifts through time to the present in a charmed way, as though her unusual name, Minerva, can somehow work magic. Perhaps it did, because the hallmark of Minerva’s work, to me, is that she painted everything gold. All the lamps from that time - wonderfully carved and turned from wood - were painted gold.