It a super-mega-wreck at the moment, but it's also my favourite room in the house. It has windows on 3 sides and it's about 10 feet by 20 feet. Not sure what it's ultimate purpose will be, but I've claimed it as mine!
The best part of the room is the wall-coverings. It's not traditional wallpaper, but instead a collection of images taken from newspapers/magazine/publications from the 1880's. My thought is that the servant collected the images from owner-rejected reading materials, and glued them to the wall to give her something to look at.
The reason I can date them is the wondrous power of wikipedia. There is quite a lot of detail in the pictures, and the ability to google the names/places gives me instant gratification. As Chris would say, "we live in the future!".
Here, I learned that David B. Hill was Governor of New York beginning in 1885:
And from the information on this picture, I was able to determine that Lieutenant S B Barrett won the Grand Aggregate Gold Cross (from the UK NRA) in 1888:
And then there are lots of just plain cool images, like:
Of course, I have NO idea how to save them. We have to do major work on the walls (no insulation, remember...) and they are so fragile that they tear if you even look at them. Research ahead!
is the plaster parged directly onto the brick? If not, can you do blown-in insulation through holes in the non-image covered parts of the walls? It looks a-maz-ing!
ReplyDeleteGood work on the image dating!
(Rik just worked on an older bungalow here, it had a "chinaman's room" shown on the original blueprint. The room was in the basement, next to the coal cellar, which still had coal in it. The chinaman's room had a buzzer that was wired to buttons hidden next to every fireplace in the house. Plus one button set in the dining room floor, next to the head of the dinner table.)
Hey, just a thought but if you are doing wall repair anyway could you choose a few of your favorites and "cut out" that portion of the wall, shellac the whole piece and then frame them individually? They would make really cool pieced of artwork to hang in your finished craft room.
ReplyDeleteHey Lee...Yvonne here. I just followed a link from Cher's Blog to peruse yours and I am so very glad that I did. This is incredible. I often dream of being in an old house filled with many hidden passage-ways and interesting rooms that I stumble upon in great surprise, not knowing previously that they were even there! I mean, I literally have these dreams. So this house of yours looks like it fell straight from one of my night-time adventures. I am awed by that room, filled with such AMAZING paper pictures pasted lovingly SO many years ago, with such an essence of someone's presence you can almost breath it in...wow. I wish I could come by for a cup of tea and sit on the old wooden floor chatting you up.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this.
Yvonne