The Bottle of Impatience

I placed fine coal dust in a bottle and sealed it with a ceramic stopper. During the glassblowing process, the vessel was shaped into an hourglass. It is displayed in a glass case among the collection of ‘Bottles of Patience’ gathered by Henryk Tomaszewski at the Theater Museum in Wrocław named after him. The collections surrounding this object consist of intricately crafted miniature dioramas with religious themes, enclosed inside bottles. The only exception is a bottle depicting scenes from work in a mine, created by an anonymous Lower Silesian miner. The precision with which it was made suggests that this object was created with great concentration over many hours. It may have served as a form of therapy following the trauma and stress associated with working in a mine, where every emergence from underground is treated as a ‘rebirth’, while descending into the mine and working there as playing with death.

The dioramas in Henryk Tomaszewski’s collection can be seen as an attempt to freeze time, a snapshot captured within an object. They reflect the human need to dominate and exercise control over the world, a need that can be realised precisely on this micro-scale, within miniature realities. The hourglass-shaped bottle I have added to this collection fits into the symbolism of vanitas, depicting the passage of time. Coal dust, far easier to fit into a bottle than a diorama, emphasises the rush, the transience, the ease and the ever-accelerating changes (including climate change) – phenomena that characterise the times in which we live. At the same time, it is waste and the least desirable form of coal.

I come from a mining family. I spent my childhood in Bełchatow. When the climate crisis forced us to rethink our existing ways of life, the town, home to one of Europe’s largest lignite mines, became infamous. For many years, the mine was my family’s breadwinner. Thanks to it, we were always well-fed and lived in relative prosperity. As a child, I was convinced that the mine would exist forever. The only anxiety I felt was linked to the risk of my father being suddenly sacked as a result of an ‘alcohol-related incident’. Bottles of alcohol were his personal way of taking revenge for the hard work in the mine, which he hated.