A new piece of furniture came to live with me recently. I say “live” because a sense of the animate seems to pervade this heavy, well--‐built item that I fully expect to outlast me. Two off--‐season linebackers wrestled it from the truck, up the walk, through my front door, around the stairs, to its current resting spot. My dining area is now complete. Houston, the hutch has landed.
I debated a long time before placing this order. Try as I might, I couldn’t attach “need” to my consumer narrative. My hutch won’t wash clothes or support a sleeping body. Unlike my electronics, it won’t teach me anything. This purchase gets logged purely and simply under the “wants” column.
The hutch’s sole purpose is to store other possessions. If I could trace its family tree, I expect I’d find cargo ships on the paternal side and hope chests on the maternal. Deep in the hold of this solid oak behemoth rests my Christmas Rose china, waiting to brighten bleak midwinter December and January days. Visible on its glass shelves and through lighted, window--‐paned doors are two other collections. Green and white Wedgewood pottery sports dancing maidens and trees in relief. This earthenware has about it the aura of a museum. The pieces are lovely to look at, and, in the absence of uniformed guards, pleasant to handle and inspect.
Keeping company with the Wedgewood is my more eclectic blue and white Cornish ware. I started bringing it home when I lived in Britain. Friends there insisted I join them on weekend outings to car boot sales—the equivalent of flea markets, but with the added charm of requiring Wellingtons for tromping through muddy fields where rows of tables offered whatever had been transported there in vendors’ Volkswagen Golfs and Vauxhall Cavaliers.
I started out as a spectator on these adventures, but eventually joined the ranks of collector, reasoning that I needed a focus for these field trips. I decided on the striped blue and white Cornish ware mainly because I could spot the pattern from twenty yards. In time, I branched off from stripes to more delicate blue and white designs, acquiring several pieces of Royal Copenhagen from Denmark and Delft from The Netherlands. None of the pieces are particularly valuable, but each reminds me of a place I’ve visited and hope to see again. I find the clean blue and white, and its neighbors, the green and white oddly refreshing. Perhaps because my time is spent largely indoors, it feels therapeutic to surround myself with nature’s colors--‐--‐shades of grass, sea, sky, and clouds.
Before we domesticated the term, “hutch” usually referred to a pen for animals, as in “rabbit hutch.” A sense of the sacred also attends the term; my dictionary tells me “hutch” can refer to the biblical ark of God. I like the notion that with this purchase I may have unwittingly secured a piece of the divine. Selecting and caring for a few well--‐chosen items can be a spiritual exercise. Most of the items in my hutch may not do anything, per se, and so may raise voices of utilitarian and puritanical ancestors; but I hush the grumblers by quoting Milton: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” What’s true for poets, can also apply to pottery.
And so I salute you, long--‐awaited, finely hewn oak cabinet. Hail hutch, heavenly vessel, come down I--‐90 from Amish country in Ohio to live and breathe and have your being here with me in southwest Michigan. Long may you hold safe all that is entrusted unto you.