Décor and More

The pandemic and our general self-isolation has eliminated some of our excuses for not digging through our piles and stacks of ‘stuff’, figuring out what to give away, what we could sell and what we could actually use…

Then there are those items that really aren’t immediately usable…but which we would never discard!  This is a large glass framed collage created by my mother…Elizabeth (Beth) Weed Myers Thomson.  It was made with egg shells, ferns and an assortment of flowers and leafs.  It’s held together pretty well for the last 40 – 45 years.  We still don’t have a place for it.

Then there’s this photograph of a castle in Scotland, on the isle of Mull to be exact.  This is Laurie’s family castle on the McCormick (maternal) side of her family.  The two people standing directly in front of the tower are Laurie’s cousin Alan and his son Jeremy.  We did find a space for this large photo in our bedroom.

Moy Castle stands on a low rock platform at the head of Loch Buie.  It was built in the 15^th Century but was abandoned as a residence in 1752 in favor of a newer home, Lochbuie House.  No access to Moy Castle is permitted due to crumbling masonry and a long term stabilization and renovation project. 

This Grandma Moses style oil painting, depicting a family gathering walnuts, was painted by Beth Thomson (my mother) at least 50 years ago.  She created many paintings in this style as well as a couple series of tiles and, late in her life, even greeting cards for the nursing home she was living in.  I used to have to help her gather and de-husk walnuts for dyes she used for her weavings… Working with walnuts was not my favorite job as husking them stains everything! 

This metal sign was already hanging on the wall next to my side of the bed.  It was forced to relocate by the ‘walnut gathering’ painting shown above.  Laurie and I acquired this nice sign during a visit to the Magnolia Market at the Silo’s in Waco Texas.

It reads, “grow old with me…the best is yet to be”.

We also came across an engraving of George Washington that we’d acquired many years ago when we were still purchasing antiques and collectable objects.  We looked around and decided that it would sit nicely on this old Eastlake Desk in our foyer.  The desk was originally given to my mother by her sister, Jeane W. Austin, to furnish my mother’s new house.

Here’s a close up of that George Washington engraving with his bust and surrounded by critical points in the Revolutionary War.  We bought it from a print and frame shop in Chicago back in the mid-1980s. 

At the time, the engraving was warranted as being over 100 years old and the frame was actually dated as being from 1885.  I recognize one scene at the bottom left as being from Valley Forge.  The picture at the lower right is either Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga or Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown. 

This is another oil painting by my mother, this time showing children playing in piles of fall leaves.  Stylistically, it is a crossover from her primitive Grandma Moses period over to her impressionistic period.  We ended up hanging this painting in our third bedroom.

This hand-colored engraving is from Historie Naturelle’s Ornithologie, published in 1790.  This is plate #180 and it was attributed to Denis Diderot…a French philosopher, art critic and writer who is best known as co-founder, chief editor and contributor to the Encyclopedie.  I actually believe that the art work was by Brenard Direxit. 

I could only identify one of the birds in the engraving.  The red bird at the lower left is called the musician or organ wren.  It is named for its elaborate song.  It’s native to South America, especially the Amazon rainforest.  I will tell you that when we bought it, this attractive engraved illustration cost more than the frame.  However, now I could purchase another copy of it on the Internet for $65.00!  This piece of art is now hanging our bonus room/man cave.

When Montgomery Ward went out of business in 2001, I rescued this old aerial photograph of downtown Chicago from the trash.  All of the interconnected buildings along the Chicago River starting at the far left to the break at Chicago Avenue and then on across the street to far right…were part of this huge complex.  

The 8-story building with the tower at the right side of Chicago Avenue was the 600,000 sq. ft. Administration Building.  It was completed in 1907.  That huge building just to the left of the Administration Building was the 2,000,000 sq. ft. Catalog Building.  It was completed in 1908.  I’m still holding on to this print…but don’t have a place to display it right now.

While I can’t specifically date the photo, I do know that the tower on the Administration Building was completed in 1929.  My best guess, given the height of the buildings shown on the north shore area of downtown Chicago would be that this photo was taken sometime in the early 1930s.  The former catalog center is now home to restaurants, the Big Ten Network, Wrigley, Echo Global Logistics, a gym, a spa, Groupon, Dyson Inc. and 296 luxury condominiums.

How about a bit of screened-in porch décor?  How about celebrating and remembering fond memories from the past? 

All of these items have been added over the last couple of years, but our latest ‘find’ amongst our ‘stuff’ was the rendering of Laurie’s former city skyline, Maplewood Missouri.  Her former family home is in Maplewood and that’s where she grew up.  The sign with the numbers above the porch sign provides the city’s zip code.  Heafford Junction Wisconsin is the little town adjacent to the cabin on Deer Lake where her family spent vacations every summer.  We’ve also stayed there since we’ve been together…

I’ll end this post with two more great bird photos that Laurie captured!  This hungry little female house finch did a great job of stripping the seeds from the Thai basil plant in one of Laurie’s several herb pots that she maintains on our deck. 

Thai basil is native to Southeast Asia.  Its flavor is generally described as anise and licorice-like and slightly spicy.  While widely used in Southeast Asia, it plays an especially prominent role in Vietnamese cuisine.  It’s also the cultivar most often used for Asian cooking in Western kitchens.

That’s all for now… Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

 

Stay Safe and Take Care, Big Daddy Dave