I Found a Vintage Piece That Brought Back My Entire Childhood

As a home writer, my apartment is filled to the brim with both functional and decorative objects — too many objects, some (my husband) might say. A number of them were purchased after months or years of pining after them, some were found, and a lucky few were inherited. But one of my favorite pieces is something that somehow feels like all three.

It’s a chicken. I’ll explain.

My grandparents passed away when I was pretty young — my grandma when I was 7, and my grandpa when I was 10. I wish I could say I have vivid memories of them or their home, but honestly I only have a few. And the ones that have stayed with me are funny and mundane in the way childhood memories often are. I remember my grandpa singing with me while we sat on the front steps of their house out on Long Island. I remember my grandma giving us “goody bags” filled with cookies in case we got hungry on the long (roughly 20-minute) journey home.

And I remember the chicken.

Or, as my cousins and I still call it, the chicken. It’s not a live one, but a ceramic chicken painted in shades of orange, brown, and yellow that sat on my grandparents’ coffee table for as long as any of us could remember. When I was a kid, I just thought it looked incredibly strange — all splotches of bright color flashing as it rocked unevenly back and forth. It was tiny at only 10 inches long, but it somehow loomed large in my mind.

The grandkids were constantly knocking it over — not on purpose, but in the way kids do when they’re playing games at the table or horsing around nearby. As oddly fragile as the thing looked, it never actually broke. It must have fallen dozens of times at all different angles and speeds, but it always remained completely intact — not even a chip.

When it came time to clear out my grandparents’ home, the chicken was one of the first things spoken for, rightfully claimed by the eldest grandchild. It felt like a piece of a shared family memory, tethered to a place and time we could all picture vividly.

That was more than 20 years ago and, honestly, I didn’t think much about the chicken afterward. But one day, while walking home from the subway, I glanced into the window of the antique store on my corner — something I do almost every day. This time, though, something stopped me in my tracks. Sitting in the window was a ceramic chicken that looked identical to the one my grandparents had owned: the same splotches of yellow, orange, and brown; the same funny beady eyes; the same rounded little figure. I ran inside immediately.

I snapped a photo and sent it to the cousin who inherited the original chicken then waited for confirmation. While I did, I chatted with the dealer, who informed me that this wasn’t some kitschy tchotchke my grandmother had picked up at a long-forgotten home store. It was a mid-century piece designed by Aldo Londi, one of the most influential ceramicists of the era. Londi was the creative director of Bitossi Ceramiche, the iconic Italian ceramics company known for its hand-glazed, richly textured pieces in earthy tones and geometric patterns. His ceramic animals, especially the chickens, became some of his most recognizable designs because they balanced sophistication with a sense of humor and whimsy.

A few minutes later, my cousin texted back a picture of the original chicken. I showed it to the dealer and we both smiled. It was a match.

I knew immediately that I had to have it. Two hundred dollars later, it was mine. Maybe that’s steep for a spur-of-the-moment ceramic chicken purchase, but I couldn’t believe my luck in finding it and neither could my cousins. I haven’t been able to find another one for sale since, even through frequent Ebay and 1st Dibs searches. There are other ceramic chickens, but not this one. Turns out, it’s special in more ways than one. According to expired listings, it was made in the 1960s and has sold from between $1,200-$2,000. Not bad! Although I’ll never sell it. 

Today, it sits on my bookshelf (because unlike my grandmother, I don’t trust myself with breakables on the coffee table), and it makes me smile every time I see it. In the end, the piece gave my family exactly what it was meant to: a little art, a little whimsy, and a shared memory that somehow keeps growing larger with time.