A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to visit an old home now being used for business offices. The place was built about 1890, and has basically been untouched since. The title picture is the back, or servant's staircase, and the wainscot you see is leather.
Yep, leather. Approximately 40 feet of hand tooled leather. Every room I saw on the first floor was treated the same way, each with a different pattern. I can't imagine the cost of reproducing this today; the work must have taken years.
And the place was full of hand carved wood. This shot is the front parlor mirror top detail.
And this stained glass window in the entry hall:
Every time I turned around I saw something else that fascinated me. Like the front doors:
Or the front parlor light fixture:
This is what's called a transitional fixture. See how some of the arms point up and others point down? The upward ones burned gas, a very common method of lighting in the 1890s. The new technology was electricity (the downward arms), and it was still unreliable. When the electricity was working, you used it; when it didn't, you lit the gas.
In this picture you can also see the front parlor mirror and the stained glass window reflected in it.
2 comments:
Love this sort of stuff too. Can look for hours. Thanks for sharing. Lorraine
Lorraine, thanks for the comment! As I find more places like this I'll be sure to post then for you.
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