I shared about my love of stone fruit in a post a few months ago. It's marble that's been carved and hand painted to look like real fruit and it's pretty convincing. It's also usually very expensive. One rare piece on E-bay can sell for $60 or more. I was over-the-moon one day when I found stone fruit at Goodwill for $.68 a piece. I snapped them right up and I was happy with my little collection. What I really longed for, though, was my grandmother's stone fruit collection.
She had it sitting on her dining room table for as long as I can remember. I never noticed it as a kid, but after I got married and learned more about decorating and antiques, I fell in love with her stone fruit. When my grandfather passed away last fall, I really wanted to get the stone fruit. It wasn't about getting something that was valuable, it was about getting something that belonged to them and had a story...and these have a funny one.
(Above is a picture of the stone fruit on my Oma's table.)
My grandfather (Opa) was always very frugal. He was a part of the "greatest generation" who grew up during the depression, fought in WWII, and didn't take anything for granted. As a kid, I would always make fun of him for turning off the A/C and throwing the windows open when it was two degrees cooler outside than inside. Anyway, the frugality resulted in my grandmother (Oma) having a bowl of plastic fruit on her dining room table. Stone fruit was just too expensive. So, my Oma (sneaky girl) started buying stone fruit one piece at a time and would quietly replace a plastic piece with a stone piece. She repeated this process until she had the amazing collection of stone fruit that sits on my dining room table today.
I'm reminded of her and that story every time I look at it. In the end, things are just things, but I really love that I can have things that belonged to people I love and miss very much.
