Found a red clay pot of my grandmother's this week, hiding in the back of a cupboard my cousin was clearing out. Nothing special to look at, glazed cracks, the kind of humble object every Greek kitchen had. But she used to say that pot was the only thing she carried with her when they left the village in '43. Fed four kids out of it on the road.

I cut pieces of it and set them into a kitchen splashback I'm doing for a client. Her pot, chipped into that wall. I didn't ask anyone, just did it. My cousin cried when she saw the photo. I told her it's the best use a pot ever got after seventy years of sitting.

Half of me wonders if that's sentimental nonsense, tiling someone's dead grandmother into a stranger's kitchen. The other half doesn't care. That pot raised a family. It's earned its place somewhere that gets used.