Creating Memories

Some Memories are stimulated visually ... some by touch and many by scents... I found an old perfume bottle this week that was just like one I purchased at my very first auction.  I was  about 8 years old when I went to the estate auction with my mother.  It was in the 1960's.  Mom gave me a little bit of change to spend and I came away very happy with an antique book and the perfume bottle with a faint rosey scent.  I didn't have many "pretty" things sitting around in my room and to me there was something so enchanting about the bottle that my personal genie could have popped out and I probably wouldn't have been surprised. So elated this week to have found this treasure, like the one from my childhood, that I began an online search to see what I could find about it's history.  The milk white glass perfume bottle decorated with a pink floral pattern I now know held Charles of the Ritz Moss Rose Cologne from the 1940's...

I've read that our sense of smell can often bring back good and bad memories and though I am certain there is truth in that, I have found that it is often "thing s " that bring good memories back to me.  I was already a devoted antique shop visitor when I lost my mother but I wasn't really an avid collector until after she was gone. I was browsing an antique shop one day when a simple plate with a cheerful pattern of  yellow poppies and black roses brought such a warm rush of memories, it nearly took my breath.  The cost of the plate was prohibitive so I jotted down the information on the back of the plate and started a long internet search through thousands of  Homer Laughlin pieces.  It wasn't the plate that I wanted anyway...it was an oval bowl in that pattern....a bowl like Mom used to serve scambled eggs. We had no other pieces in that pattern and I have no idea where Mom acquired that one random bowl.  Who would have guessed that just a plate, in ...