Clearly, a reminiscence like yours resonates with more than a few people, especially those of immigrant ancestry. Our pedigrees are significantly different, at least on the surface, but I, too, was born with only one, surviving grandparent, a grandmother. She lived in Queens, in what seemed, to me, in my childhood, like a magical apartment, filled with treasures very much evoked by your blue, cased-crystal vase. I have her wedding band, which I’ve worn (on my right hand) for 30+ years (she had big hands); an art-deco torchiere (which was inexpensive, I’m certain, but a beautiful archetype, nonetheless); and a striking, fringed and beaded silk appliqué she sewed by hand. This piece was used as a closure on a dress she’d also sewn for herself, for going out dancing, in the Twenties (about a decade after her arrival in the U.S.). Apparently, she was quite the seamstress, and quite the social dancer. The dress is long gone, but the appliqué remains, a testament to a vigorously creative mind, which I sadly did not get to know.

Her carefully sewn, multi-colored, deco beadwork is like your neglected, tessellated, Washington Heights foyers: a talisman, conjuring entire worlds, and lives, of craftsmanship, internal aesthetic standards, and a search for joy and dignity in the chaos, upheaval, and constraints of early 20th-century, immigrant life.

Thanks, as usual, for bringing me back so adeptly, to a potent, personal memory.