Our house is filled with artwork, cloth and knick-knacks we’ve picked up over decades of travel.

I often wonder what I’d take if we chose to downsize to an apartment when zimmer frames make the house too difficult. Here are seven very special pieces that I’ll take to my grave.

Maoist kitsch

I bought this statuette in a Beijing flea market about 20 years ago for $15. These pieces were massively popular during the Maoist cultural revolution in China and now command sometimes high prices from kitsch aficionados.

I took it back securely wrapped in hand luggage where it went to my university office, sitting on my desk for several years.

One day a Chinese student came to see me for feedback on an essay. I saw her look at the figurine and asked her “so who is the man kneeling? Is he someone well known, or is he a particular kind of worker or dissident?” This much seemed obvious.

She looked very awkward and said carefully “It’s no one special … but he’s a professor”

I could not have been more delighted to learn this. Clearly here was someone who might have been me, had I been an academic in Maoist China. The red guard holds aloft Mao’s Little Red Book, the only book worth reading, and stands on his shoulder, publicly humiliating the professor in his re-education.

“So what does the wording on the sign around his neck say?” I asked.

She seemed mortified and looked at the floor. I assured her that I knew it must have been something awful about the professor. She could tell me. I wouldn’t be offended.

After some moments, she sheepishly told me that it said “Academics are parasites on society”.

The fish mouth vase or water jug

This truly bizarre piece was the featured image in the catalogue at a Lawson’s decorative arts and objects auction several years ago.  We’ve had a koi pond for 25 years (photo below), and their beauty has since piqued my interest in fish art and objects. So this item burned into my attention. I won the bid and took it home, to my wife’s horror.

It had a dark residue inside suggesting it had been used to keep flowers in water. I cleaned this out and now use it to pour table water at dinners. A single kanji character on the base told a neighbour who is a fine arts specialist that it’s Japanese.

Senegalese barbershop advertising sign

I’m an Africaphile and have spent hundreds of hours in the African quarters of cities in record and CD shops when these used to be  common. On a trip to New York about 30 years ago, I bought this painting in a small SoHo gallery. I’d seen many of its kind before. They are front-of-shop advertising signs for barber and hairdressing shops in West Africa.

My parents were both hairdressers. They had many magazines in their salon’s waiting area with hundreds of photos of women’s hairstyles that customers could browse for ideas as they waited their turn. So this barbershop art resonated strongly with my childhood.

This one is one of the best examples I’ve seen, among many that are far more naïve in the quality of the art (see large selection here). I have a book in French  Ici bon coiffeur by  Jean-Marie Lerat (1992) which shows examples from most West African nations.

Beatles drawing

On the same New York trip when I found the barbershop ad, I found this ink drawing being sold by a wizened up old man, selling his work from a square card table on the footpath, again in SoHo. As the Beatles audition, a slovenly record executive asks “What else do you do?” I thought it was perfectly witty and paid something ridiculously small like $20 for it.

I  noticed it was signed “Tuli”. In my teens I’d been a huge fan of the New York beat poets rock band The Fugs . Named as a nod to Norman Mailer’s book The naked and the dead where he substituted “fug” for “fuck” to taunt puritanical censorship policies of the time, their most famous song was the salacious Boobs a Lot. I loved the driving Group Grope off their second album too. Country town Simon thought they were just cooler than. Tuli Kupferberg was a core Fugs member.

So I said to him “Are you Tuli Kupferberg, by any chance?” and knock me over, he was! He was delighted to be recognised. We chatted excitedly for 20 minutes or so and he invited me to his place that evening with the promise of illicit experiences. I gave my excuses. He died in 2010 at 86. The sex, drugs and roll n’ roll didn’t cut him short.

Our original Modigliani

Wandering one morning in Ho Chi Minh city years back, we saw a labyrinthine art shop with several artists inside painting portraits  from photographs and copies of famous paintings from books.

And then we saw it. A clearly original Amedeo Modigliani. In fact, a painting so famous that it graces the cover of  the Taschen collection by  Doris Kyrstof  (see below). And here it was in front of us, with the shop owner clearly unaware of its immense value. After a lengthy tea ceremony, we shook hands on $40. We’re sending it to Southeby’s  next year.

We also bought a Van Gough haystacks original.

Turkish shop dioramas

I’ve been to Turkey several times since the early 1970s. Istanbul should be on every traveller’s bucket list. One day in 2014, walking on the shore of the Bosphorus after a night singing on a marriage boat, I found a small shop selling intricate diaoramas of old Turkish shop fronts. There were many to choose from, all about $120. I bought two and on return visits have bought more. Pictured (top to bottom) are  a general grocery shop, a fish monger, a bakery and a fruit and vegetable shop.

These miniatures transport me back to childhood nativity, military and historical diaoramas that fascinated me and which I crudely constructed in shoeboxes with toy soldiers, knights and cowboys.

Reg Mombassa tunes up

When COVID restrictions in Sydney lifted after months of us being cooped up, it was announced that we could have a maximum of 20 people at home, in addition to those living there.

A tennis mate, Dizzy, called me and said that in celebration, he wanted to host a pay-to-come house concert to raise money for a charity in Indigenous housing. His contribution would be to pay for the musos. Did I know how to contact Dog Trumpet? I did, and gave him the details. Pete and Reg jumped at the idea.

So on a Saturday night in Dizzy and Margot’s amazing renovation of the upstairs of a Balmain shop, 20 guests joined them for a two set gig in the living room. Another friend, the photo gallery owner Phillip Bell came along too. He took the stunning photo below and sold it to me at mate’s rates.

I always think of Vermeer when I take it in.

The central bottom right window pane, you can see Reg Mombassa tuning up before the start. Everyone was mesmerised by their sheer, original talent and easy presence throughout the best of nights. If you don’t know their work, here are two of my favourite pieces. Buttons undone and Bored wife.