traditional Japanese black lacquer chest

My Aunt Helen lived and taught in Pakistan for about 20 years. A lifelong Presbyterian, she served two colleges there as a Professor of Islamic History. She had first gone to India in 1947 (where we were told by her friends that she had had Mahatma Ghandi for tea in her home on three occasions,) but after Partition she chose Pakistan. One of her former students told us at her funeral that he would always remember her as a really good teacher and a really tough one.

We children knew her as orderly, firm, sensible, generous, loving and kind. She loved books and would let any of us borrow precisely two books at a time from her library ~ and then, of course, she told the very best bedtime stories ever!

She returned to the States on a regular basis and once came by a ship that took the long way around and which stopped in Japan. In Yokohama, the Purser took her to meet a cabinet maker that he'd done business with. Since there would be just enough time to get the work done before the ship sailed, Aunt Helen decided to have something made. "It was most entertaining," she told us, "to see the craftsmen debating which traditional design would be the very most appropriate one 'for a maiden lady professor of a certain age.'"

This is that cabinet. We think it's terrific.

Aunt Helen was better.