Help! Pottery has taken over my house!

The pots!

In all their glory! Well, not quite all of them. Some bits and bobs were hiding behind me:

The two square ceramic wall hangings (four in each set, sun designs, red and blue – to make it clear which ones I mean!) were found within an hour of each other and *cough, cough* both by me. Which is a rare occurrence, I can tell you. My hunting style is a quick, excited whip round the shop seizing upon the brightest, boldest pieces like an over-exuberant magpie. Whilst Aidan is the proverbial tortoise: he takes his time and scours each shelf carefully, unearthing treasures that I’ve completely missed. He usually follows this up by pointing out that my find has a got a chip the size of my face on it. But not with these two; oh no! I found them fair and square. I take my small triumphs when I can.

It took a bit of persuading to get Aidan to agree to the giant, orange Scheurich at the back. However, I think he was mollified somewhat when he realised we could virtually fit the rest of the KA’s contents inside it. This is where the magical packing skills of the Holt family come into play. It’s a certain skill that only the men of that family have and has a strict set of rules:

1. Don’t let anyone else touch the packing area. That means anyone.
2. Tut and sigh: loudly and frequently.
3. Eschew any usual forms of packing material, i.e., cardboard boxes or bags. Instead, use things such as the promotional materials from the nearest Lidl to cushion your carefully arranged items.
4. Carefully arrange your items by constructing what appears to be a large, ceramic jigsaw.
5. Pack pots inside pots inside pots inside pots inside pots… (you get the picture)
6. Don’t let anyone touch the packing area. This is important enough to be reiterated.

There are more but you get the picture. Speaking of which:

One of the worrying aspects of these trips is that we are getting to the point where we are buying duplicates of previously bought pots. Whilst at one time we used to get excited by the mere hint of an orange, foamy glaze and couldn’t believe our luck at some of the finds, now we are actually, dare I say it, becoming a bit blase about some of them.

Take the bulbous brown and orange Scheurich in the picture above. We bought the exact same pot on our first ever trip to Germany, fairly early on in the holiday. We were ecstatic and couldn’t belive our luck at finding it. This time, we deliberated over it for about five minutes of whether it was worth buying again or not. We’ve still got the first one in our bedroom!

Is that all of my hastily taken shots done? I think it is. You may be interested to know just how we’ve managed to fit all of these in our house. Here are the current sites:

• The living room – on, inside, under and in front of the sideboard. In every corner. On and in front of the hearth.
• The kitchen – on and under the kitchen table. On top of the bookcase in there.
• The bedroom – inside, in front of and besides the laundry box. In every corner.
• The bathroom – on top of the weird sticky out bit that goes over the stairs.
• The spare room – on top of and in front of a set of shelves.

Yes, we are probably the only people in existence who store West German Pottery in the bathroom.

Aidan is currently in the process of photographing and cataloguing all of the pots. I intend to steal his pictures and post them up as he goes along.

Enjoy this one as a sneak preview (I’m into these at the moment):