Kunta Kinte vs. Billy the bookshelf

I´ve always found it quite exciting with antiques, and when I was little I would call them "old and nice" (gammal fin), prefering grans auction-house catalouges before comics. And it is a special feeling to know from when and where an object comes. Bringing it to life by using the clues and filling in the gaps with a good portion of imagination. I´m lucky that my gran shares the same interest and never throws anything of the slightest antique value away. I much prefer to eat with cutlery with the initials of my great granparents, or use the handwoven curtains with the monogram of a great aunt rather than buy massproduced IKEA stuff that comes together once and then never can be altered again.

In the mid 1800´s my grans great grandfather was a sailor in the East India trading company and he would spend long periods away at sea. His family lived in the house we call "Olga´s" (see photo in previos post), in the little village of Lohals on the island of Langeland. Now Lohals harbour was far too small to house any big ocean trading ships, so the nearest port to his home was in Svendborg. From there he would take the stagecoach delivering mail all the way to Lohals. Now imagine what sort of luggage a person staying away for maybe a year at a time would have... right, every crewmember had their own wooden chest, a piece of solid craftmanship.

In those days you simply didn´t throw away a perfectly functional piece just because the original purpouse of manufacture had been served, so when he finally stayed on shore, the chest was treated to a set of legs, a decorating top, and a new lock less likely to need to keep out nosey foreigners. It was integrated in the furniture of "Olga´s" and for a long time it was a central piece of the dining room, storing the good china. When my gran was little it had sort of gone out of fashion, and had been moved to her dad´s, (Carl the master bricklayer) work room, storing all his drawings.

In the 50´s, when my gran had moved to Sweden, she discovered on one of her return visits home that her mother, Kirsten, had painted the inside of it pink! Now I don´t know how long that was on fashion, but sometime between then and my early childhood memories, it was redone in white and was again a centre-piece of the lounge.

On my mums side of the family there is a habit of naming objects and places of special significance, and this chest-turned-cabinet forever holds the name Kunta Kinte after the character in the old TV series Roots. Not because it had seen the world engaging in slave trade or anything, but simply because Kunta Kinte simply symbolized something very old for whoever came up with the name.

These days Kunta Kinte stands in grans room in our house on Hou on Langeland, and I know that eventually it will get to my turn to integrate it in to my life and things.