Shelf Life - The Vase

Funny how it seems that some objects have been in the family for ever.

The vase below has long been special to me and appears always to have belonged at my Mum's.

It fills me strongly with a sense of my own childhood. I was never allowed near it as a child! But now as a mature Emperor - she can't stop me.

I am told by the Imperial Mother that this simply designed slab vase was a present bought for her by her brother in 1966 as a special present for her 21st birthday. An original piece by the Swedish post-war designer, Stig Lindburg, it appealed to my Uncle's love of simple Scandinavian design, at a time when my Uncle himself was still a young student at Glasgow School of Art.

The depicted scenes with their honest, vibrant colours, are not fully known to my family. However, my august Mother has a notion, or perhaps part-memory, that it signifies the progression of the sainted Mary Magdalene. In some Christian traditions she was said to have landed on the South coast of France, near Marseilles, after the death of Christ.