"...The orchard used to produce a crop every year, which was made into cherry jam. But, as Firs informs us, now the recipe has been lost. It is thus a relic of the past, an artifact, of no present use to anyone except as a memorial to or symbol of th

[joseph berg]

Concerning that comment about Chekhov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD, isn't there a
parallel with the world of art today where young artists no longer can begin
to hope to create works of art approaching the level of the masterpieces of
the past because they no longer remember the recipe, i.e., that the skills
and rules of the past have not been properly passed down to them?:

http://www.sparknotes.com/drama/cherryorchard/themes.html