ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses upon the meanings of China created and sustained through its exchange, use and preservation rather than its design. It draws upon the responses to the 1998 Mass-Observation Giving and Receiving Presents directive, suggests that preservation is an unrecognised, even alternative, but widespread domestic practice within a consumer economy driven by desire to replace objects that have not worn out. The chapter is therefore, there is a comparison between the specific practices of possessing China and those of keeping an object that could be considered its opposite: Pyrex. Pyrex is reinforced glass used to make a range of oven and table ware: casserole dishes, jugs, mixing bowls, soup bowls, desert dishes, plates, mugs as well as complete dinner services and tea sets. Nevertheless, across all the responses to the Wedding Presents section of the Giving and Receiving Presents directive Pyrex is the most frequently cited individual product.
