Fragments of Nazi-looted Porcelain

Sometimes  a story told by a stranger completely overwhelms me. Last year at a friend's 40th Birthday party I heard one of them. A young art student, called Michaela (I still don't know her surname) told me about the sherds of nazi looted pottery she was curating for her MA exhibition

Her great grandparents had owned a world-famous collection of Meissen porcelain in Dresden. Being Jewish they had to flee the nazis (taking a boat to Port Elizabeth), and Hitler earmarked their collection for his own purposes. It was carefully packed into 25 crates. Then the Russians came and eventually most of the collection became the property of the East German museum service, including one truckload that got buried under the rubble of Dresden castle when the allies bombed the town to bits.

In the course of time the collection was restored to the family, and twelve crates of "value-less" broken and burned fragments were distributed amongst the twelve children of the family. Michaela inherited some of these from her granny

Broken fragment of a Chinese marching boy

Michaela very unexpectedly got hold of my friend (whose party it had been) and specifically invited me to the opening of her exhibition. It was very moving, and beautifully done - exploring how fragments and brokenness can be as valuable as perfection, and how scars can tell a truer story of reality than flawless presentation.

There is always something to learn out there - one of the reasons that I love the unexpected connections that arise between strangers!