Shrine for MawMaw's Coffee Cup
I have this memory of my grandmother, MawMaw, pouring coffee from an old percolator into her everyday coffee cup. She would purposefully fill it to the brim and then tip the cup ever so slightly so that a portion of the steaming, hot, black as coal coffee would dribble over the edge and into the saucer below. She would then sit down at the end of the table in the kitchen, next to the vintage stove, and remove the coffee cup from the saucer and set it to the side. Lifting up the saucer, she sipped gingerly the rapidly cooling black liquid, slurping down the last drop. By the time she had finished with the saucer the coffee in the cup was cool enough to drink.
A few memories from when MawMaw was still with us have lodged themselves deep within the recesses of my mind: The coffee cup-saucer ritual, the dilapidated old farmhouse and the Carolina red clay that spring up every time we tilled the soil on the 54 acre homestead.
Her everyday coffee cups are long gone, as is MawMaw, but I was able to salvage some of her china and some of the old wood flooring from the farmhouse.
This shrine pays homage to those memories.
Unfired Carolina red clay, salvaged hard wood flooring, inherited china, coffee
10”h x 240”l x 96”w 2009
