Mormon Grapes

Here is my younger sister Carla playing dress-up. You can see the plexiglass grapes on the buffet behind her.


Here is my family, probably Easter 1967. (My dad was taking the photo.) You can see the grapes on the end table. L to R: my mom, Carla, me, Larry, Cindy, Cheryl.

These grapes were a standard feature of every LDS home in the 1960's. Directions to make them were published by the Relief Society, and I think the women in every ward in the church made them in Homemaking meeting. I think this is how they were made: by pouring colored liquid plexiglass into the opening of a glass Christmas ornament, and inserting a wire. Then after the plexiglass hardened, they cracked off the glass, and twisted the wires around a pretty stick to form the cluster of grapes.

I heard a story once, probably a myth but I still believe it, that a non-LDS person, after seeing the grapes in every LDS friends' homes, asked the LDS person, "What is the significance of grapes in your religion?"

Wayne and I went home-teaching to two of the women in his Young Adult ward last year. They were in their 20's. When I entered their apartment, I gasped when I saw grapes on their coffee table. I asked where they got them, and they said they inherited them from their grandmother. I WAS SO JEALOUS! Now it has become my quest in life to find some so I can put them on my table. I think it would be the height of kitsch! Too bad my mom got rid of hers.

(I'm usually a good speller, but I had to look that up. KITSCH: Definition: 1. something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality 2. a tacky or lowbrow quality or condition. I think this is a good definition of things in my home.)