Ever since touring the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York a couple of years ago, something has been bugging me and it has to do with those terracotta jugs from ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, ancient Kansas City.
Maybe in Kansas City’s case, that should read ancient wine bottles, and there weren’t any of those at the Met (that I saw, unless they were of the terracotta variety). The Nelson Art Gallery in K.C. could be another story.
Back to terracotta. There were a lot of those red earthen jugs at the Met, big, small, medium, even though the impression was that in the wide, wide world, they are fairly rare and valuable.
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How valuable, I don’t know, but if you were to bring one to the Antiques Roadshow, they would be at least slightly impressed that it wasn’t another Tiffany lampshade.
Here’s where we get to the “what bugs me” part. If we had lived in ancient Rome when it was still known as Rome, I’m pretty sure we would have treated a terracotta jug with as much respect as is now given a plastic Dasani water bottle or a rerun of The Golden Girls.
So you never know what might be deemed valuable in a couple thousand years. Those Dr. Scholl’s arch supports that you were about to throw out might be worth something by then. I guess the only way to find out would be to submit your (deceased) self to a cryogenics storage facility and hope they don’t have a power outage for 20 centuries. See you later.
