Noun
Any furniture, movable, or personal chattel, which by law or special custom descends to the heir along with the inheritance; any piece of personal property that has been in a family for several generations.
Source: Webster's dictionaryNo heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language. Theodore Bikel
I don't know the first thing about holding together a family, especially one that resembles an heirloom vase, shattered but glued back together for its beauty, and no one mentions that you can see the cracks as plain as day. Jodi Picoult
Antique things have an appreciation and worth. Something can be old, but it can be timeless; therefore, it becomes an antique. If this antique is preserved and deemed precious, it could be passed down as a family heirloom. Cee Lo Green
The principal and only way to make an heirloom product is to design something that people will need not just this year, but for the next 50 or 100 years. Saul Griffith
I think I now understand why it is that the young are so very nostalgic. They have so little by way of personal history that they polish it up and make it shine like a treasured heirloom. Will Self
Anyone may have diamonds: an heirloom is an ornament of quite a different kind. Elizabeth Aston