A Bird stump is a variety of vase popular in 1920s England. It was generally made of porcelain in the shape of a tree stump, with a bird for decoration. Stumps of branches on the side of the tree formed the openings into which the stems of flowers might be inserted.
A bird stump plays a role as the MacGuffin in Connie Willis's 1997 time travel science fiction novel To Say Nothing of the Dog: How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last.
Famous quotes containing the words bird, stump and/or vase:
“The bird is lost,
Dead, with all the music:
While sunsets heard the brain’s music
Faded to last horizon notes.”
—Owen Dodson (b. 1914)
“The birch stripped of its bark, or the charred stump where a tree has been burned down to be made into a canoe,—these are the only traces of man, a fabulous wild man to us. On either side, the primeval forest stretches away uninterrupted to Canada, or to the “South Sea”; to the white man a drear and howling wilderness, but to the Indian a home, adapted to his nature, and cheerful as the smile of the Great Spirit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Forgotten and stinking they stick in the can.
And the vase breath’s better and all, and all.
And so for the end of our life to a man,
Just over, just over and all.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)