Headford News and Community Spotlight - A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion

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COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT

Upon learning of the death of a lifelong friend, Albert Einstein wrote in a March 1955 letter to his friend’s family:

“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

For many people, that illusion of past and present offers a soothing familiarity, a way to place ourselves in the continuum of life. For instance, when you pick up your great grandma’s old 19^th century tea pot, you get a whole different feeling than when you use your white plastic Dunnes kettle. Antique objects—pieces of the past—stand in stark contrast to the homogeneity of the mass-produced present. They can act as a sort of balm for the spirit, helping us feel connected to those who came before.

If there’s anyone who understands this concept well, it’s Karen Hughes. Karen brought her mother-in-law, Rosie’s legacy with her all the way from Liverpool to Headford, when she recently opened up the aptly named Rosie’s Antiques on Main Street.

The new shop is located in the old Solas office, which has gotten a complete face lift and looks positively gorgeous! As you enter the shop, a large table dominates the centre, filled with colourful, sparkling and tasteful objects, and a candle scented like ‘Fireside Treats.’ 

Everything is awash in peaceful, pastel colours and light pours through the windows and bounces off cut-glass vases, bottles and glasses. It’s little wonder few people pass the shop without stopping in.

Karen is a lovely woman with dark hair and a creamy complexion who refused to have her photograph taken, so you’ll just have to imagine what she looks like.

The shop is an eclectic mix of what Karen calls a ‘mish-mash of nick-knacks,’ and beautiful antiques. Prices range from as low as Two Euros to as high as Four Hundred Euros.

‘I didn’t want it to be one of those dusty, old antiques places,’ she says. You know—the kind that smell funny and seem overly dark. So that’s why there’s a mixture of old and new, past and present.

Karen shows me a piece she’s particularly proud of. A 19^th century set of three beautiful crystal decanters in a wooden holder that has a lock and key. ‘Most people ask why there’s a key on this,’ she says. My response was that it must have been used to keep the liquor locked up so the servants couldn’t drink it. Karen tells me I’m right, but in fact, I’m not.

It’s called a tantalus, named after one of Zeus’s sons who got in trouble and was then ‘tantalized’ by food and drink he was not allowed to consume. While the wooden frame on this piece would have been locked with a key, it was more for show than to actually protect the liquor from servants. Most self-respecting butlers in the great aristocratic houses would never have considered pilfering from the master’s liquor supply. If such pilferage had been a problem, why was a solution not found until well into the reign of Queen Victoria? And why create a device that would only protect a few decanters, while the bulk of the household liquor supply was kept in the cellars, to which the butler held the key? The more likely scenario is that the tantalus was just one of many novelty devices which were popular with the expanding and increasingly affluent middle class of the last half of the nineteenth century. Having grown up with few, if any, household servants themselves, they could believe they were imitating their betters by “protecting” their few decanters of expensive liquors in a tantalus.

When Karen and her husband moved here from Liverpool last year, her mother-in-law, Rosie, had recently passed away. They chose this area because her great-grandfather was from Galway and she and her husband were used to coming to Ireland for holidays. Just a few months ago, they found a house in Ower and everything fell into place.

‘I used to teach special needs kids and I knew I needed to do something,’ Karen says. ‘I’ve always been fascinated with anything old, anything with a history.’

The shop has old dressers filled with blue and white patterned dishes and fun objects. A hand-beaded wall hanging is draped across one cheerfully-painted kitchen dresser. A prayer mat from Alaan in the Middle East hangs on one wall. There are handmade lap quilts from the U.S. and a dazzling variety of lamps and broaches.

Karen hopes people will ‘feel free to pop in and browse around. You don’t have to buy anything. I enjoy getting to know people.’

Perhaps the one piece in the store that gets the most attention is the old milk churn. ‘Older people come in just to look at it and say, I remember when . . .,’ Karen says. ‘I love to hear all their stories. Even looking at the old mirrors makes people remember things.’

Einstein would probably say that’s appropriate—that illusions of the past should be reflected in this shop in the present.