Ginger jars are more fragile than they look. Take care not to bump, bash, or otherwise imperil them. No one wants a jar full of cracks or poppable hairline fractures. It would truly be time to break out the Merry Widow Tea to toast its passage. But cracked ginger jars need not go before they belong: even with a blemish or two, these jars can claim new life.
Got a broken ginger jar, you ask? Engage in clever recycling by turning it into a lampshade. Saw a hole at the base of the jar without slicing your fingers (be careful). Then, pull the electrical wires through this gap and the areas where the cracks lie emit a beautiful shadow when illuminated- like having your own glowworm right at home!
Perchance you’re more at home in the great outdoors. Surely a brand-new lease of life miraculously saves a jar from the scrap heap. Fitting it out as a planter box helps remove broken items and keeps your little fuzzy plant occupants sleek and fit. Each container has its own temperament, to choose from. Did I hear some one mention succulents? Good-natured low maintenance plants providing interest for your balcony or entry way, these partners of this posh second life will all add to its luster.
Another fascinating metamorphosis one could consider? Use it as an organizer for the family computer or living room writing table. You know the place, where pens, pencils and all manner of office flotsam get together and make a home. With its noble looks, even in its broken condition the ginger jar gives sleepy everyday objects a sense of occasion.
Want to add a touch of whimsy to your next garden party? Your jars’ split halves make quaint candlesticks. Arrange them along the walks and tables. Here candlelight flickers on the cracked, irregular surface of ceramic, imbuing all who see it with a peaceful, cozy feeling.
Hold your horses, don’t throw away that top! As for these cracked counterfeits, the recycling plant can give them a lease on new life as decorations. They can be used as paperweights or little bits and bobs that sit on owl’s alkaline shelves. They will celebrate the continuing get-up-and-go shown by all those jars and retain their mysterious luster in broken condition. There must be stories attached to that.
And I heard that question–what if you have fragments even larger than these, smashed ones that are beyond repair? Not to worry. Gather together such fragments and give voice to the artistic spirit with them. Make mosaic pictures whether piled on an old picture frame or spread out over paving stones by the way. This is art that does not just hang still in the frame-instead it walks around at your side, chatting with guests in tales handed down from afar. Reclaimed walls, broken ginger jars: Dead Containers Get a New Lease on Life
Mosaic Art with Ginger Jar Fragments: A Dying Klatch of Charm
Remember grandma’s ginger jars from those days you went tiptoeing through attic boxes? Every box was full of memories–and dust! And it smelled like the longing of your ancestors. The blue-and-white porcelain that fills your mind’s eye with so many family stories in days gone by is being swept away by today’s digital whirl. When these treasures are aging, what should be done with them? The answer mosaic art. Life gives these relics a second lease on that level.
It is poetic to take the ruined future and mix in only glimpses of today. Imagine that for yourself! Artists are making this art of weaving broken lives (chipped pasts) into living mosaics. Today’s fashionable mosaic art takes this poetry and transforms it into realty, using fragments of ginger jars.
However, since we are on the subject of stories, let me take this opportunity to mention Uncle Frank’s trouble. This event was at a dinner party. Uncle Frank, in the process of gesturing maniacally to indicate how good his fishing was going–that masterful catch had netted writer’s novels on making salt cod look like a beginner–knocked over Aunt Hilda’s favorite ginger jar. The noise was terrific! It takes all the onlookers old enough to remember being asked for clarity. While everyone was laughing and pretending not to notice, the shiny pieces of shattered pottery struck someone’s imagination. Why not make a mosaic to remember these jar pieces too? The birth of an unwilling artist. We all watched it happen right there then.
But the beauty of mosaics is that each piece has its own delight built in. It can seem like a part of its past, just as a plum’s small burst berry may contain the potential tree, seeking to create its own garden on a steep hillside or deserted sewer system. While there may be colors of Chinese dragons blue on a wide range of bases, these will turn vividly eitherarily purple as they embrace trailing vines or blades grass all its own. In this way, each piece emerges as a fresh creation free from history to ensnare it.
The good thing about mosaics, however, is the element of chance involved in their ultimate creation. It may appear to be an orderly development indeed but such an adlib story–a functional jazz composition, perhaps, with no notes must matter except they are all fascinating. From chaos and chance would emerge something that said even more than the creators had hoped for. Is life not much the same?
Now imagine putting together this kind of mosaic onto the existing table on your patio. A fragment of a ginger jar here, a broken vase there–suddenly it looks as if they’re having a conversation. Maybe they’re chatting about us, their producers. Whatever the case, one has transformed what might be considered a pedestrian surface into something touchable with masses of bright color and sudden daubs of blue–marvelous indeed.
Like their work, people who collect and/or create mosaics are individualists. Some like their mosaics to tell comprehensible stories inside the mold of a family heirloom journey, perhaps. Others simply seek pure aesthetics–colors, patterns–to delight the senses without any intended meaning beyond what one finds there. Not unlike the way novels and poetry are different sorts of fare, each appropriate in its place.
The art world’s voices are those who claim that traditional methods of craftsmanship deserve a full chorus as seen in mosaics made from ginger jars. It’s like reverse archaeology–a little repair archaeology, maybe–instead of searching and publishing the secrets caught in broken fragments, we do something unusual onwards.
