'Oh Ho' On Sale at Ebay

Like many who have fallen on hard times in these final years under Ferris W Fremont, Tessa Dick has had to resort to parting with some real treasures. Currently on ebay, 'Oh Ho,' the handcrafted piece of pottery Dick was given by Kathy, a student at Mills College, sometime in 1971. Dick wrote extensively about how this object, for him, seemed to contain the ultimate and benign creator. Check it out here.

PKD writes of the pot in Deus Irae:

"Turning, Pete made out the bobbing floating image of a small pot, a modest object, fired but without glaze; merely hardened. A utilitarian object, from the soil of the ground...What a silly name he thought: Ho On. A silly name for a transitory, breakable pot. Well, he liked it anyway; it has, as it said, treated him as an equal. And somehow that seemed more important than any vast transcendent significance[....]" (46-67)

And VALIS:

"Stephanie had come close when she made the little ceramic pot Oh Ho and presented it to Fat as her gift of love, a love she lacked the verbal skills to articulate."

Rickman described the pot in a footnote: "I once had Phil show me the actual Oh Ho, a beautiful little blue pot, which he kept carefully hidden away"

I have to say, Tessa's price makes this one of the biggest bang-for-the-buck mementos I've seen on the market. Unfortunately, Tessa's digital camera isn't the best but here's a photo of the pot she sent me:

Tessa writes:

-- It is brown, not blue, but it does have a splash of blue glaze
-- It is very well made, and looks professionally made
-- Unfortunately, it has no markings, not even initials marked in the clay