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Tiffany Hanssen: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen in for Alison Stewart. Chances are you've got an object in the house that means a lot to you. It could be something that reminds you of your mom, your grandfather, a special memory you share with someone. We like to hold on to those things that have some sentimental value for us, our own personal heirlooms.

In 2015, photographer Shana Novak founded The Heirloomist, a project where she photographs people's heirlooms and tells the story behind them. She's released a new book that compiles some of her favorite heirlooms from the project, including from people like Gloria Steinem, and Rosanne Cash. We're going to talk about that, Shana.

The book is called The Heirloomist: 100 Treasures and the Stories They Tell and with us now to talk about the book and take your calls is Shana Novak. Hi, Shana.

Shana Novak: Hi, Tiffany. Thanks for having me.

Tiffany Hanssen: Absolutely. All right. Listeners, as we said, we want to hear from you. Do you have an object in your home, in your life, that has a special sense of sentimentality for you? Is it from your parents, your grandparents, another family member, or some trip you took? What is it that created that heirloom for you? Tell us about it.

You can text us at 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. You can call or you can text that number. You can also reach us on all of the social medias @AllOfItWNYC.

Shana, let's first start off by describing what an heirloom is because it means a lot of different things for a lot of different people, but you had to have sort of a baseline description in your mind when you started on this project. What is that?

Shana Novak: Yes, I would say the beauty is that the baseline was an heirloom can be anything as long as it means something, as long as it stands for a memory that's impacted you, stays with you, affects your modern-day life. If it carries something for you, that means it's an heirloom.

Tiffany Hanssen: Right, because a lot of people might think, oh I don't have that heirloom jewelry or whatever expensive.

Shana Novak: The candelabra.

Tiffany Hanssen: The candelabra, exactly. We're saying, no, just throw that preconception out the window.

Shana Novak: Yes, that's when the magic happens, when you keep an open mind and consider anything.

Tiffany Hanssen: You started this in 2015. Just give us a little background on how you got started on this.

Shana Novak: I have been working as a professional commercial still life photographer with lots of big brands, well-known brands. The Heirloomist sort of became this personal project that I was originally working on with my grandmother. It was a way to apply my professional learnings to something a little more heartfelt. It was just thrilling to be able to work with still-life objects that actually meant, really, a lot to my heart and to other people's hearts.

Tiffany Hanssen: Well, I don't suppose we can get too far without asking if you have an heirloom [laughs]. You must, right?

Shana Novak: It's funny. When we talk about what is an heirloom, I have the gamut. I have all of my grandmother's silver table settings, but I also kept my pocket knife from summer camp. It all just tells its own story and it all forms the story of who we are.

Tiffany Hanssen: Do you remember how old you were when you had an awareness of heirlooms? I can remember as a kid, my grandmother has this, it's like a piece of-- had this piece of folk art, we still have it, with-- It's sewn in German words. The lore is that it was brought from Germany. It's got dried edelweiss on it.

Shana Novak: Oh, wow.

Tiffany Hanssen: I can remember that as a pretty little kid. I remember thinking like, "Okay, that's something we got to protect."

Shana Novak: Yes, I think that that reverence for family's tangible history something similar to that was definitely present in my family. Once all the stories get told and all the heirlooms get explored, that's when we started looking to the other stuff that also had equal value.

Tiffany Hanssen: We have a text. "We have in our family a samovar that apparently came from Russia. It is stamped which I understand is what gives it more value or authenticity. As you're saying, Shana, value isn't necessarily the high watermark for what an heirloom is.

Shana Novak: Right. We get to say.

Tiffany Hanssen: We get to say.

Shana Novak: We get to say what the value is.

Tiffany Hanssen: If you have an heirloom that means something to you, call us, 212-433-9692. You can text us at that number. You can find us on social media @AllOfItWNYC. We want to hear about your heirlooms this hour. Shana Novak has a project called The Heirloomist. She's been taking photographs of heirlooms and we want to hear about yours. 212-433-9692.

You've said how being-- I'm going to call you, you are The Heirloomist.

Shana Novak: [laughs] That's me.

Tiffany Hanssen: That's you. It's almost like being a treasure hunter. Now what I'm curious about is if you are going and looking for treasure, let's say you're someone who goes to thrift stores or you go to antique stores, like sometimes I have come across an item, maybe it's like, I don't know, this is not something I've come across, but like a locket that still has a photo in it. How do you feel as The Heirloomist when you see something like that, it's almost like a lost heirloom?

Shana Novak: Yes. There's a heaviness. There's a respect. There's a respect for it. I think that one of the best things about what I get to do is I get to use my photography skills to make that object really shine, try to bring it back to life, and give it a voice again. Just having it out in the world, we start to tell the stories and wonder and explore what the meanings are. I think that that gets a conversation going and it's just so wonderful to have.

Tiffany Hanssen: We have a text. "When my grandmother died at 96, I rescued her wooden rolling pin from the donate pile."

Shana Novak: Oh, I love it.

Tiffany Hanssen: "It was so banged up and still had flour in it from her last batch of noodles from homemade chicken noodle soup. I hold it, I feel close to her." Oh my gosh, I could cry. Okay, "My father was an Italian soldier," here's another text, "captured by the Germans. When he was a prisoner of war for two years until the Americans liberated him, he went back to school, got his engineering degree, and his PhD. My mother has that degree-

Shana Novak: Oh my gosh.

Tiffany Hanssen: -hanging in a frame." [laughs]

Shana Novak: Amazing.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes, so stories tell our history. These heirlooms, I should say, tell our history.

Shana Novak: Yes, and they're also affecting our stories right now in modern-day world.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes. I'm going to take a call, bring in Carolyn here from Brooklyn. Hi, Carolyn.

Carolyn: Hi. Can you hear me?

Tiffany Hanssen: I can hear you. Thank you for joining us.

Carolyn: Oh great. Oh yes, this excited me because this is what I did since the 1970s. I started taking on heirlooms. I had my first heirloom, which was the Urchin wedding. It was a famous pianist songwriter, and they put it in the-- I was working in a Soho and they posted in a paper and I was interviewed after that. I had so many requests that I left Soho and started my own business with the brides that I restored from the store. After that, I made it my business just to do heirlooms.

I only do heirlooms, and maybe I sit now at, I'm at the end of my career, kind of the sunset. I'm selective maybe two a year, but they're all families and they do indeed have the stories. As I told the person that picked up my call, that the brides wear their family heirlooms, and then when they have children, their children wear the christening gown or family, the husband, so they continue that and I preserve them.

They bring them back to me to be preserved. They're totally restored. I take them apart, I clean them, I have a conservation in textile background. I take them apart, I reline them, and when I take them apart, the bride has the opportunity to restyle it.

Tiffany Hanssen: Wow.

Carolyn: The transformation is incredible.

Tiffany Hanssen: Sounds wonderful, sounds wonderful Carolyn. Carolyn brings a question to mind here, Shana, which is we may think it's an heirloom, and as I'm hearing her talk about heirlooms being handed down you know what, some people might not necessarily think that's an heirloom and we can't necessarily count on that can we?

Shana Novak: Right. Yes, it's hard that we all get handed down, but I always say and this is the most fun of the heirloomist, try to use it. If you don't know what to make of it you've been given this thing that obviously has meaning, maybe use it.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes, I want to get to that. I want to get to that. These things don't belong under plexiglass all the time, right? Okay, so we will get to that. Before we take a break, one quick call. Tracy in Staten Island. Tracy, good morning, or good afternoon. I do that. Good afternoon.

Tracy: Hi. Our family heirloom is a portrait of my husband's great-great-great uncle, George Covington, and it was painted when he was 19 years old, a Union soldier in the Civil War, and he was killed in the Battle of Dallas, Georgia. We have a photo of his family sitting, his parents and his siblings sitting in front of the exact painting that we have hanging in our house now.

Tiffany Hanssen: Wow.

Tracy: It's just absolutely amazing. We have his sword and his epaulette.

Tiffany Hanssen: Wow.

Tracy: It really is just such a taste of the past. We will never sell it. We will never go on Angie's Road Show. [laughter] It lives in our house and it will hopefully hang in our son's house one day.

Tiffany Hansen: Nice. Tracy, thank you so much for the call. We are talking with Shana Novak. She founded The Heirloomist Project. There's a book called The Heirloomist: 100 Treasures and the Stories They Tell. We're going to keep the conversation going. We want you to join us. 212-433-9692. You can call us. You can text us at that number and talk to us about your heirlooms. We'll continue the conversation just in a minute after this quick break.

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This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. So glad you're with us this afternoon. We are talking heirlooms with photographer Shana Novak. We're talking about her new book as well, The Heirloomist: 100 Treasures and the Stories They Tell. Shana, I want to go right to the phone so we can bring in another listener. Delia, did I say that right? Delia in Brooklyn?

Delia: Hi there. It's Delia.

Tiffany Hansen: Delia, welcome to All Of It.

Delia: Yes, thanks for having me.

Tiffany Hansen: You have an heirloom.

Delia: That's right. I have this pair of earrings that have come to be my favorite but I have no idea what they're worth. My mom just wasn't wearing them much so she said I could have them but quickly they became my go-to's [laughs] and they've just become really special because yes they're my favorite and there's been two times where I nearly lost them, but didn't.

One of those times, I was coming off a Metro-North train I was on the stairs from a lower platform going to walk into Grand Central, in a horde of commuters, and someone tapped me on my shoulder, and I had no idea what they were going to say, but they pointed vaguely toward my face and then my ear, and they said, your earring is unclasped. You better secure it. They saved me that time.

Tiffany Hansen: That's the thing I love.

Delia: In then the past weekend. Yes.

Tiffany Hansen: Oh, thank you.

Shana Novak: It's meant to be. You were meant to have those earrings. The universe said.

Tiffany Hansen: The universe said it. All right. We got a text in too here, Shana. "My grandfather worked his way through college and medical school in Macy's rug department during the 1920s. Macy's was a big deal in rugs then. When he left to be a doctor, his boss said to come back when he got married and he'd give my grandfather a deal on a rug. That rug is in his apartment today." There's something that's being used, Shana, as we're talking about--

Shana Novak: That's perfect.

Tiffany Hansen: As we are talking about heirlooms that don't need to be put under plexiglass, that can be used and enjoyed and that connection can be felt, right?

Shana Novak: Exactly, that's the word that you said, the magic word, connection. It's such a special thing.

Tiffany Hansen: We also have a caller I want to get to here that is included in the book. Is this right?

Shana Novak: Yes.

Tiffany Hansen: All right. Ron Lieber. Did I say your name right, Ron?

Ron Lieber: You did.

Tiffany Hansen: All right. Good. Ron is a New York Times money columnist. He also has an heirloom that he can tell us about that is featured in the book. Ron, the heirloom is-- I'll let you say it.

Ron Lieber: The heirloom is the mouthpiece from my late father's trumpet.

Tiffany Hansen: Interesting. What is it about that, that made you feel so connected or, I guess, so connected to him through it that you decided to keep it and give it this distinction?

Ron Lieber: Well, I think among the many stages of grief that you go through when you lose a parent is a stage of gratitude where you try to think about what are the gifts that this person left me with, the things that I will carry with me for the longest amount of time. With my dad, that gift was music, the love of music, whatever genetic skill that exists in biology that caused me to be somebody who can sing on tune and play a few instruments and the joy that music brings me to this day is something that I connect with him when I experience that joy.

Tiffany Hansen: Shana, these items have an effect on us today, even though, for example, it probably-- I'm assuming you don't play the trumpet with this thing, right, Ron?

Ron Lieber: I do not. [laughter] I never picked up a brass instrument. In another life, I'm going to be a sousaphone player.

Tiffany Hansen: Noted.

Ron Lieber: Yes, mostly I'm a piano player, and I mess around on the guitar a little bit.

Tiffany Hansen: Shana, these items have an effect on us today.

Shana Novak: Yes. Ron has me crying a little bit here because he hid it exactly when he said, that we are left with gratitude. I think just trying to celebrate and see the light and see the good stuff that we're living here in this life with is so important. His story was such a perfect example of that.

Tiffany Hansen: Ron, do you think that this-- when you're no longer with us, when you're on your way to becoming, was it a sousaphone player, do you think this trumpet mouth piece will be coveted by someone else on this earth the way you have?

Ron Lieber: I don't know that it will. Yes, so my oldest daughter is old enough to have memories of my dad. My youngest one doesn't really have very many. Will this be something that she covets? I don't know. She wears his class ring around her neck sometimes.

Tiffany Hansen: That's a good one.

Ron Lieber: That's the thing that she took when we went to collect his belongings. We all have our things and as you were talking about earlier, they may or may not have much monetary value, but the wisdom and the beauty and the intense value of what goes on with these portraits, in addition to the fact that they're just gorgeously shot, is that it offers the ability to preserve something that's priceless in a way that will sustain itself and can't easily be lost or broken the same way that a mouthpiece can.

If that trumpet mouthpiece disappears one of these years, I'll be sad, but the fact that I can stare at a gorgeous rendering of it whenever I want brings me essentially the same joy as the physical object does itself.

Tiffany Hansen: Nice. Ron, thanks for calling in. Ron Lieber is the New York Times columnist and his heirloom is included in Shana's book. Shana's book is The Heirloomist: 100 Treasures and the Stories They Tell.

We are talking heirlooms. We have a text talking about this musical connection. "I am the keeper of a tall stack of my Swedish grandmother's tattered piano music and will soon travel for the first time to Sweden with my collegiate son to our ancestral homelands where the piano sits in a local heritage center."

Shana Novak: Wow. Love that.

Tiffany Hansen: That's amazing. Ron was talking about whether or not his daughters will keep a hold of this trumpet mouthpiece. There are minimalists in this world, Shana, who say-

Shana Novak: I know.

Tiffany Hansen: -we don't need this stuff. This is stuff that tethers us to the world and it's materialistic, we don't need it. What do you say?

Shana Novak: I say that is okay. There's a huge conversation around what to do with old family stuff. We're not here to declutter or give tips on living the minimalist life. Whatever you feel like you need to do with your own belongings, we support it. It can be freeing. Maybe make some art out of it before you get rid of it. We're here for that.

Tiffany Hansen: Right. While we're talking about different generations, I want to take a call from Marina in Jackson Heights. Hi, Marina.

Marina: Hi. My dilemma is this. I think that today's generation is perhaps less sentimental than certainly mine. I've reached a certain age where I look at things and they remind me of people and life past, but I have an only child and he isn't as sentimental. He does not look at things the same way. Has your guest run into this thing with the people whose legacy she has immortalized?

Tiffany Hansen: Yes, Shana, it's a curious question, that we've been talking about. Where is the sentimentality going?

Shana Novak: Yes, sometimes the sentimental doesn't actually have to be present, but we must keep telling these stories. If they're heard, that's what matters. I do agree that our kids are changing, but we've got to let them have their own experiences and make sure that they know that we were here and did things that really matter. Heirlooms are a great vehicle for that.

Tiffany Hansen: We have a text from Gio in Brooklyn. "My mother got a macaroni machine in the early '70s. This was a huge purchase for my family. I remember the day we went to get it in Little Italy. My mother was so proud. I still make macaroni on that machine. It means the world to me." Again, Shana, with this thing there's a connection that's sparked when you're able to use one of these items, don't you think?

Shana Novak: Yes, absolutely. It changes the experience completely. I woke up this morning and had a big cup of coffee, and I stirred my skimmed milk in with my grandmother's silver spoon. It's those little points of light that I think make a huge impact.

Tiffany Hansen: Well, it begs the question, what if something happened to your grandmother's spoon? What happens when an heirloom is damaged? If we're encouraging people to use these items, use the tablecloth, use the macaroni machine, use the rolling pin. When something happens to it, that-- especially if there's a real connection there, that can feel really hard.

Shana Novak: Sure, but you got to go into it knowing that you're going to enjoy it, and make it useful in your life, make it count. It's like Ron said, if something happens to it, so be it. We still had that moment to enjoy it and no regrets.

Tiffany Hansen: Cindy in Dobbs Ferry, good afternoon, Cindy.

Cindy: Hello, hello.

Tiffany Hansen: You have an heirloom?

Cindy: I have a wonderful heirloom. My grandfather, Grandpa [unintelligible 00:20:52], was in World War II. He landed on Utah Beach and marched. During some downtime in between many of the marches, he would whittle, and I have some of his beautiful things that he whittled.

One of my favorites is this tap dancing man who is on a pole, and it has a spring, and there are joints, and he's wearing a yellow shirt. I'm looking at it right now, in little red pants. He's just so special. It's like if my house was catching on fire, I would grab that and run out with it. It's so special to me.

Tiffany Hansen: Thank you, Cindy. Shana, really quickly, I'm just wondering what happens if people have an heirloom that they feel like they've been deemed the caretaker of but they start to feel like it's an albatross. Have you run across that?

Shana Novak: Yes. That's a really good question. It's definitely up to every single person. There's no advice I can give. It's really a personal thing. I always advise people to just make sure if you need to give your heirlooms away, maybe make sure they go to a good home where they can be useful, someone who maybe needs them or would profit from having them in their lives.

Tiffany Hansen: How is it photographing these heirlooms? Is it an emotional experience?

Shana Novak: Sometimes it's very emotional. I always go on autopilot because I'm doing my job and someone's got to keep the strobe lights firing. It's a great mix of really putting my best foot forward for something really heartfelt. There are certain topics that definitely get me.

Tiffany Hansen: We have a text, "I have a pearl necklace from my grandmother, which is the thing that is so great about it is that it held her scent for many years." Oh my gosh, you're going to make us cry. "Since pearls are porous, I didn't realize this until I opened the pouch and it was such a distinct smell and such a gift."

Shana Novak: What a gift.

Tiffany Hansen: A lot of times, these things give us little surprises, even after so long.

Shana Novak: Yes, I love it.

Tiffany Hansen: The book is titled, The Heirloomist: 100 Treasures and the Stories They Tell. Is this project ongoing? Is there going to be more from the heirloom-- We've heard stories, the stories from the heirloomists continue and continue.

Shana Novak: Yes. I photographed four heirlooms just this week, so I'm not stopping.

Tiffany Hansen: Can you share one?

Shana Novak: Yes. We get cowboy boots a lot.

Tiffany Hansen: I saw boots in the book. [crosstalk]

Shana Novak: Yes, it's one of my favorite things to photograph because they always arrive, they're either shined up beautifully, or they're still caked in mud, and there's always a story.

Tiffany Hansen: Are people still wearing these boots?

Shana Novak: Typically, they're from somebody who's passed away, but tall boots, they can be so heroic and stand for so much hard work. I love it when they arrive caked in mud because that means there's some hard work going.

Tiffany Hansen: There were boots, Bob Woodruff's boots, in the book that I'm looking at right now. There were some fishing boots. Boots tend to be a thing.

Shana Novak: Yes. I think a lot of miles get walked in work boots, so-

Tiffany Hansen: Yes, that's right.

Shana Novak: -prime for good stories. [laughs]

Tiffany Hansen: Photographer, Shana Novak, founder of The Heirloomist, thank you for your time today.

Shana Novak: Thank you for having me.

Tiffany Hansen: The book again is The Heirloomist: 100 Treasures and the Stories They Tell. We have more of All Of It coming up next hour including a conversation about dating after 50. It's not all bad news. We'll get to some of the good news too coming up on All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. Stay with us.

 

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