If a vase could talk, it would tell stories about people and their way of moving through the world. It could perhaps tell about the newlywed couple who were given the ceramic vase as a wedding gift back on a spring day in May 1978. 1970s ceramics, which were often brown and rough with visible traces of hands. The vase here testifies to happy children of nature, self-sufficient collectives, thoughts about biodynamics and sustainability... but it can also tell a story about the economic crisis in the 80s - about how the vase was packed in a cardboard box when the family moved from the house to the small one-room apartment... and how it once again housed fresh flowers when the grandson carefully dusted it off - forgotten and hidden after years in the attic. The vase was found at an antique market ... and now it is on the shelf at Zoll Antiques. Here it brings back memories of the freedom, slowness and style of the 70s as well as the joy of the unique and handmade. ..and waiting again for fresh flowers on a sunny windowsill.
With this little story, we give the vase a voice. The exciting thing about this consideration is that we do not just look at the vase as an object - a thing, object or function, but try to see it embedded in different life worlds, social relations, places and times. The vase has a historical depth, contains life and actions - emotions and reflections. We can thus say that the vase is meaningful in the values that we as humans attach to things, but the vase can ALSO be meaningful for our understanding of the world and history. In other words, the vase can speak to us: partly by influencing our subjective feelings and partly by being an object through which we can learn and analyze cultural practices and historicity.
(source: Bille, M and Flohr Sørensen, T (2012): Materiality - An introduction to culture, identity and technology. Social literature)