1950's Furniture

My parents had some wonderful pieces of furniture before they left Denmark.  Everything was sold and the plan was to buy something when they got to Canada.  They went shopping and found some great looking furniture.  I can still remember them.  They got 2 blue brocade sofas, 2 chairs (one was brown, large and square, the other was round, twirled and was teal blue).  After about two weeks the legs fell off one sofa and the back snapped off of the other one.  The legs on the one table also began to totter but somehow my mother managed to fix it.  They also bought a small china cabinet (no hutch) and a dining table with 4 chairs.

            My parents were shocked at the terrible quality of the furniture.  This was something they were simply not accustomed to back home.  When you bought a piece of furniture it lasted centuries.  As it was my parents learned to adjust by my mother taking up her carpenter skills, and also being creative in how she reupholstered the furniture.  She was really quite good at it.  When they moved to Hamilton she discovered a fabric shop that sold wholesale goods and that’s how Jeanette and I ended up wearing coats and pioneer style winter hats made out of the same fabric as she reupholstered the chair!  It was a good thing we were not allowed to bring friends home because it would have been humiliating for them to see us wearing a sofa on our backs!        Some of the furniture lasted better than others.  I still have the bedroom dresser that my parents bought back in 1957 and my brother Erik has the little coffee table (new legs though).

            Our Bing & Grondahl ornaments did not arrive until later, when my grandfather started sending things to my mother to ensure that we kept our heritage.  To make up for selling our paintings back home my mother took up her painting again and created some fine pieces for our living room.  My brother John still has those pieces in his home.

            I am very attached to my own material goods and I suffer agonies when I hear what my parents sold or gave away when they immigrated.  You have to be a very brave person to give up so much. 

            And that’s just the material side of things.  Imagine saying goodbye to your family and friends and leaving with the very real possibility that you will never see them again.  That’s what it was like back in 1957.  At that time you could not foresee a change in the economy, a time when there would be enough time and money to travel back to Europe.  In 1957 most people still immigrated via ship, not airplane.  To travel by plane was an exorbitant expense.  In the case of my parents both sets of parents were already elderly when they left.  (I just realized with a shock that my grandmother was 57 – does that make me at 58 elderly?!?)  My mother’s parents were 61.  My parents were 24 and 27 – in relation, the grandparents were OLDER.  As it turned out my mother never did see her mother again.

            Life is strange but we have to take it on the chin.