René Seindal

In the five years I’ve lived in Venice, I haven’t had any one home for long. It’s been a lot of moving around, and basically camping out in the various places, hauling along a bare minimum of stuff to reduce the burden of the next move. Every time I thought I had found some kind of stability, something happened to mess up my plans.

I have lived for periods in a tent on a camp site, with a friend on the mainland, in a shared room in an apartment in Venice, in a small apartment on the Lido where the rain came in through the outer walls, and in a shared apartment where my flatmate suddenly left for whatever reasons, and left me with a double rent for the remainder of the contract duration.

A home is a basic thing in life, and living for prolonged periods without the stability and certainty of knowing where you’ll sleep the next night, or next week, or next month,  can be very burdensome.

I have now, however, found a place I believe will be a home for the next years to come. At the very least I’ve signed a contract for a place I like, in a fantastic location, for a rent I can pay.

The location is in the centre of Venice, on the Campo S.S. Giovanni e Paolo (shown in panorama above), which is one of the major squares in Venice, and one of the most beautiful too, in my opinion.

The apartment is small, but on the third and top floor, accessed from a courtyard on the main campo, with windows on an internal courtyard. That means light, air and little noise, all properties that are very hard to find in Venice, at least at an affordable price.

The previous place I lived was on the first floor, windows on a calle about 1 metre wide, where drunk tourists often roamed up and down, howling as they fought to find their way around the labyrinth of the calle, rughe and salizade of central Venice.

None of that here, though. The only noises in my new home are the nearby church bells a few hours a day, and my landlady across the courtyard singing along with the radio or trying to get her kids to do their homework.

The building itself is old, even by Venetian standards. It originates in the 14th century, and was originally the embassy and hostel for tradesmen from Brescia, hence the name Bressana of both the front courtyard and the adjacent calle.

(this painting is from the mid 18th century – little has changed)

Most important, I have a contract for at least two years, and extendible to four years.

Its good to have a home.

My mothers maiden name is Wils. We’ve long believed it was of Dutch origin, without having any proof, but I’ve been in contact with a relative of my mother’s who’ve done an extensive genealogical study of the family, and in fact the name does come from the Netherlands.

Hendrich Wils, born in Luikgestel in 1793, moved to Denmark in 1809 at the age of 16, to work as a travelling tradesman in copper pots and pans. At a later time he settled in Horsens,  where he continued to trade in copperware, employing other travelling traders. He then moved to Faaborg, now under the more Danish name Henrik Wils, and from trading in copperware he extended into the production of linseed oil, and he was among the founders of the local savings bank Faaborg Sparekasse where he also served as bank manager for a period.   He married a Danish women with whom he had four children, and he was granted Danish citizenship by law in 1865. He died in 1866 as a wealthy and respected citizen of his town.

His son Henrik Wilhelm Wils was born in Faaborg in 1841, and took over his father’s business, but apparently he did have his father’t talent in trading, because at his  death in 1894 there were only enough left to cover the expenses of the funeral.  Henrik Wilhelm Wils married Karen Christine Christiansen and they had six sons and one daughter.

The third son of Henrik Wilhelm Wils was Hans Peter Marius Wils, born in 1875 in Horsens. He worked as a shoemaker in various cities, first in Randers, then he moved to Copenhagen and later to Hillerød where he died in 1924.  He married Maren Caroline Sandø who passed the name Sandø on to her children, and it still runs in some branches of the family. They had eight children, three daughters and five sons.

Their fourth child was Harry William Sandø Wils, born in 1909 in Hillerød. He worked as a house painter. He married Mona Etta Christine Milling from Hillerød, and they had six children. Harry William died in 1940 before the birth of his last daughter.

That last daughter is Kirsten Wils, born in 1940 in Hillerød. At the age of twenty she married bookkeeper Svend Erik Seindal and they had three children, one daughter and two sons, before their divorce fifteen years later. Kirsten is alive and well, and is enjoying her retirement between piles of books and CDs.

Kirsten’s second child is René Seindal, great-great-great-grandson of Henrik Wils, a pennyless immigrant from North Brabant in the Netherlands in 1809, two centuries ago.

When my uncle died last year, Valentina and I were offered the old wine glasses my uncle had inherited from my grandmother. They have been in the family since long before I was born, and my guess is that they were bought in the 1930s or 1940s.

They’re handmade, blown, faceted with an hexagonal stalk,  and all bit different. It is not an industrial product, but made individually by a skilled craftsman.

We have three sizes: red wine, white wine and port, but in different numbers, probably because some glasses has been broken throughout the years. The white wine glasses are green, as were common back then.

Today, for a St. Valentine’s excursion, we went to the Copenhagen City Museum because we’ve never been there and its been on our lists of thins to do for a long time. Now, imaging our surprise when we see this table set on the first floor, with a sign saying “Typical bourgeoisie dinner table, early 20th century”.  The wine glasses are completely identical to ours.

Now, as I remember, these glasses weren’t found on the “typical dinner table” in my family – they were for feasts and celebrations, but then my grandparents weren’t “bourgeosie”, but middle class like most others.

Naturally that experience made me quite curious, and I searched the net a bit to see what it is we have in the cupboard in the kitchen. I discovered that the series is called Derby, and it was made by Holmegaard glassworks from 1891 and later by Kastrup glassworks up to 1950. Both companies are Danish. Holmegaard is the oldest Danish glassworks, founded in 1825 and still working.

There are at least seven different glasses in the series: tall champagne, wide champagne, large glass for beer or water, red wine, white wine (green), port and aquavit.

We have number 2, 3 and 4 from the right, and I know my aunt has a few aquavit glasses as well.

The nice thing about this discovery is that since these glasses are still common in antique shops, we have the possibility of supplementing what we have. Champagne glasses would be nice for New Year’s eve