The bread was just a target of opportunity, though. We'd come looking for a dry sink, and were immediately distracted by a Mennonite quilt (circa 1930), and hand-cranked cherry pitters, by a beaver top hat, and by cast-ironware, a black-oiled Griswold cornbread pan the most arresting of the lot.
But the hunt narrowed soon enough: At least four dealers were offering, quite unexpectedly, large, vintage wooden bowls.
A good wooden bowl, as you may know, is hard to find, especially when you're in the market for one tight of grain, rich of patina, and 17 inches at the open mouth.
That was the approximate girth of the bowl I'd shattered during our kitchen renovation: I grabbed for it on a high shelf, fumbled it, and watched it crash to the floor, splitting clean in two.
My wife had given me that bowl for my birthday years ago. And though I use a smaller, darker one to toss the salad for daily supper, the Big Bertha was my cherished go-to bowl for dinner parties, picnics and family gatherings.
I liked gazing at it, too - a pool of serenity amid the beeping ("I'm finished now!") dishwasher, the whir of the coffee grinder, and NPR's latest bad news from Baghdad.
It was the color of butternut, soft and warm. It was wide and deep, smooth as a river stone; and you could get good purchase beneath the German potato salad (usually with bare hands), or with the cherry tongs under the lettuce-apple-walnut salad I like to toss with cider vinaigrette for Thanksgiving.
For months I indulged the fantasy that I might put the bowl back together again, employing some miracle glue and butterfly joiners: Sometimes I'd just press it back together to see it whole again.
It ranked up there with my mother's scuffed wooden potato masher, and my worn hand-carved spoons, with a spatter-glazed coffee mug from A.R. Cole, the red-clay master potter, and the curling-edged pot holders the grandkids made.
