Thanks for the Memories

When Time who steals our years away

Shall steal our pleasures too,

The mem’ry of the past will stay,

And half our joys renew.

--Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

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The past is always present, especially now. Be it time capsules being buried to commemorate the end of the century or people appearing on the popular cable show “Antiques Roadshow” talking about their ancestors’ belongings, the joy is in the remembering.

Just looking at an item often brings back memories. With that in mind, we asked several Orange County residents what they treasure from the past and want to keep in the future.

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For Irini Vallera Rickerson, professor of art history and gallery director at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, and her husband, architect Robert Rickerson, sentiment and art unite in the works they own by the late Orange County artist David Torosian.

“David was a close friend,” says Vallera Rickerson. “I showed his mixed-media works at the gallery in 1993 and people still remember the exhibit. His works have all his energy, spirit and soul.

“We never get tired looking at them, as well as works by the late P.J. Freeman. She was a volunteer in the gallery and an art student who did beautiful pastels and gouaches. She was in tune with the Earth and all the works reflect her. I see her in them every time I look at them.”

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Author Judith Krantz, whose autobiography is due out in May, started collecting French majolica pottery in 1984 when she and her husband, Steven Krantz, were living in Paris while making a TV movie of one of her books.

“When I bought my first piece, I didn’t even know what it was,” she says. Her collection is spread between her houses in Beverly Hills and the Balboa Peninsula.

Considered the pottery of the people, majolica was in great demand during Victorian times from about 1850 to 1870. Design motifs of this tin-glazed pottery were often inspired by nature.

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Ceramics are also a favorite of Laura and Miguel A. Pulido Jr., mayor of Santa Ana.

“On our honeymoon in Guanajuato, Miguel bought me a huge Talavera pottery bowl in blue and white,” says Laura Pulido. “It was hard getting it back on the plane, and when we got it home it took up half of the kitchen table.

“My cat Annabelle was [still] getting used to Miguel and I living together. Maybe she was jealous of him because she jumped into the bowl and cracked it. But by that time we were hooked on the pottery and now we buy one piece each time we go to Mexico. I love it because it has a Scandinavian look to it that mixes with the Mexican. That combines our two backgrounds.”

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Jean-Pierre Lortal, general manager of Newport Beach’s Sutton Place Hotel, keeps scrapbooks that contain souvenirs of special evenings, such as wine labels, menus and pictures.

“I systematically [assemble the pages] right away, so everything doesn’t end up in a big box somewhere,” says Lortal, who was born in France. A special page in one of his books is dedicated to the day he became an American citizen.

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Newport Beach resident Patricia House, who is president of Pasadena’s Pacific Asia Museum, keeps two African sculptures made by the Baule tribe from the Ivory Coast of west Africa in her bedroom. “I’m passionately attracted to African art, but especially these two. The figures represent searching for your soul mate.

“I got the exquisitely carved female in a gallery in Nairobi,” she says. “Two years later I was in Minnesota and saw the male figure on the top shelf of an art gallery. Both figures had been made in the 1940s, and the one in Minnesota had been bought from a missionary to Africa in the 1950s. And so my female sculpture has found her soul mate.”

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Mystery novelist Elizabeth George, who divides her time between London and Huntington Beach, has her favorite collectible in the dining room of her London flat.

“It is a large painting from the late 1800s that I bought in 1996 in London. It shows a woman with red curly hair dressed in white. When my relatives came over and saw it they said, ‘You bought us an ancestor,’ ” says George.

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Art glass paperweights are a special favorite of Tiffany & Co. vice president Jo Ellen Qualls. “I especially like the Caithness paperweights that are signed by the artists,” she says.

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Huntington Beach resident Anne Shih is never far from her Asian roots, especially as a volunteer at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, where she was involved with the February exhibit “Secret World of the Forbidden City.”

“My treasure is a small redwood box that my grandmother gave me when I was a child. In it are many important memories. There’s a small stone I found when I was 4. For me it’s like a diamond, although it’s probably glass. But when I saw it, the light hit it and made it glow so I picked it up off the ground.

“Also in the box is a piece of needlepoint that I won an award for making in grade school and my daughter’s and son’s first teeth.”

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For Lady Betty Griffiths, a piece of furniture brings fond memories. “I wouldn’t part with my oak kitchen table for the world,’ says Griffiths, about the table in the Laguna Niguel home she shares with her husband, Sir Eldon Griffiths, president of the World Affairs Council of Orange County. “We brought it with us from England, and it’s been in the family for over 200 years. It weighs a ton.”

Ted Wells, architect with Ted Wells Mark Noble Inc. in Laguna Niguel, has a 1948 Eames potato chip chair that’s his favorite possession. “It’s a real early one, but 50 years later it still looks good. It’s nice to see a design hold up so well, with its construction married to the design,” he says. “It was honest in the way it was made, and, as an architect, that’s kind of fun for me.”

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Interior designer Hank Morgan, who’s been in the business for 27 years, has started buying a few nice antiques for himself.

“I hope to move into a new townhouse in Crystal Cove, and so I’d like to have some really good pieces there. Gone are the days of buying houses, decorating them and then selling everything. Now I want to hold on to things. I especially love good, traditional furniture. I don’t have a lot, just a few special pieces.”

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Rock star Mike Ness, whose new album, “Under the Influence,” explores his love of old country music, prizes his Atomic Blast guitar first, and then it’s his collection of religious icons, carnival prizes and tiki artifacts from the 1930s and 1940s. “All these things in my house inspire me in writing my songs,” he says.

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Doree Dunlap, executive vice president of 1451 International Art Publications in Irvine, cherishes a Ptolemy illumination from the Vatican Library. “From the first time I saw it in Rome, it totally captivated me as it references contemporary art from ancient times so succinctly,” she says. “It’s so minimal and reductive, a navy blue sphere with gold lines.”.

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Art is also important to Tony DeLap, who will have a retrospective of his artwork at the Orange County Museum of Art in the fall. “A small black silhouette of my profile, cut by the legendary magician Dai Vernon in 1980, is a treasured possession,” he says.

Vernon (1894-1992) was one of the foremost practitioners of sleight-of-hand. “We became friends in the 1960s and spent many enjoyable hours together over the years, mostly at the Magic Castle in Hollywood,” DeLap says. “He had studied art as a young man and came to many of my exhibitions. He loved to talk about the visual arts and the art of magic.”

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Cynthia Miley, owner of San Juan Capistrano’s Decorative Arts Villa, prizes a 19th century Tiffany pendant watch with gold and diamonds.

“My husband, John, bought it for me [because] he said that I work so hard that I deserved it,” she says.