An heirloom is simply an object that has been passed down through a family from generation to generation, but the term is generally applied to something that has some monetary value, such as jewellery or a piece of furniture. To be honest, I would struggle to name any such relic that once belonged to my ancestors – perhaps their families were never prosperous enough to own them in the first place or else they were passed down different lines and are now owned by distant cousins.
Although I treasure my mother’s rings and the brooch that my grandmother always wore, out of the many objects that I found whilst clearing my parents’ home in 2022, strangely it is a bunch of five rusty keys, pictured in the header of this blog, that have somehow come to hold the greatest meaning.
The reason why is perhaps best expressed by the following words, which I wrote when I used them as the inspiration for some prints that I created in 2024:
“A curiosity found whilst clearing my mother’s garage, a set of five rusty keys, some large and ornate, some smaller and plainer. A weighty bunch that someone has carefully tied together with neatly knotted string. It fits my hand exactly. I will never know who these old keys originally belonged to, but several generations have made the decision to keep them, each with their own reasons for doing so. And now it is my turn …”
The keys, which probably date from the 19th century, were amongst a random collection of objects that originally came from my maternal grandmother’s house in Portsmouth, but I cannot assume that they relate to her side of my family as some of my paternal grandfather’s possessions were also stored there after he died.
Although there is now no family narrative to explain the origins of this unassuming set of old keys, they have come to symbolise the many mysteries inherent in my ongoing hunt for a connection to my ancestors, and the inevitable processing of loss that has accompanied it.
Sleuthing Notes 