Object #3

This is one of a pair of white clay Beaceware cups and saucers. This one has a complete Beauce mark with the cb mark and serial number. It has a small chip under the handle that the previous owner has attempted to mask by painting it blue. The blue paint is also faded, suggesting much use after the chip occurred.

The glaze is a little more green than in this photo, and has greater subtlety than is often seen in similar Beauce glazes. It’s a standard dark ground with lighter drip from the top/centre.

Jacqueline

“More tea?”
“Of course.”
Two girls with straight black hair, plaid dresses and bows, white tights and black mary janes. Perfect teeth in tiny mouths. The picnic had been on for an hour or so, the adults cheering various strange races and contests, the older children competing for trinkets. Left alone on a pale blue blanket, a wicker basket full of lunch, a thermos full of tea and dark, sturdy teacups. Jacqueline pours carefully, straining with the liquid’s weight. A slight slip and she burns her sister, who pushes her off the blanket, down the hill.

Object #2

This is a brown trophy mug, with the inscription CANADA LSP on the bottom. The front has two plaques, one says Molson Award with the Molson’s logo, the second is engraved metal that says East London Slo Pitch 81 Export Champ. I’ve asked a few collectors about this mug, and we all agree it is likely Laurentian Pottery. I’m not terribly sure what the S could stand for, but more research is being done.

These mugs appear frequently at thrift shops, and one could get a whole series of years and sports if so inclined.

Will

His dad built a shelf for it in the den. A solid plank of dark stained wood Will would never remember the name of. After dozens of other failures – the car fiasco, golf, hunting – he’d done something worth his own space in his father’s hall of masculinity.

Three years later, after the accident, he toasted the man from this lone trophy. He took it back to Toronto with him when his mother sold the house. Standing in his apartment he knew the exact spot he would build the shelf for both of them, from smooth, dark wood.

Object #1

This is a red clay McMaster Craft souvenir mug from Dundas, Ontario, produced some time in the 1950s or 60s, according to Holly Gnaedinger of Twice Found, a store specializing in midcentury modern design in Toronto. The mug has Frobisher Bay, N.W.T written on it in gold pen, as was common among McMaster souvenir objects. The remains of the company’s sticker is still visible, with the words Dundas, Canada. It is light blue with a darker blue green drip from the top.


DOUG

She’d been gone for 12 hours, 17 minutes and 43 seconds. Doug poured more beer into the pale blue mug, a gift from her parents after an ill-advised trip. It made him angry, who goes to Baffin Island for a vacation? The mug’s mate lay broken next to the half closed door. Doug finished the beer and poured another, spilling some on his stopwatch lying on the table. 12 hours, 20 minutes and 16 seconds.