Victorian Fish Tanks

The Victorians had a keen interest in nature. House plants were a novelty as were fish. A few rare examples of Victorian era fish tanks do exist. The one pictured is a reproduction of a Victorian tank based on illustrations from the era.

Other tanks look more like modern rectangular tanks. The cast iron rectangular tanks provide some ideas on how one might decorate a modern tank to make it more fitting to a room's decor. This large image of an antique tank has great detail to work from (click here for that image).

Furniture: Victorian Balloon Chair

Design Toscano is carrying this unique reproduction Victorian Balloon chair. This is one reproduction you don't see every day. It is also currently on sale.

Old House Tours, Loch Aerie Victorian Mansion

Old House Tours has a huge photo and video tour of Lockwood Mansion aka: Loch Aerie in Chester County PA. This unique property is a rather rare combination of Italianate and Victorian Gothic on a sprawling estate.

The home has numerous porches, small conservatory areas, ornate plasterwork and a grand central staircase. There are some other oddities in the photo tour. What looks like some sort of wood burning central heating system or a complex wood fired kitchen store. A large wood barrel of some sort installed by one of the spiral staircases makes one wonder about the origins. If your interested it is on the market for $2.2mil and is zoned for commercial.

The Victorian indoor pool, Sutro Baths San Francisco

The Sutro Baths were officially opened in 1896. Adolph Sutro, mayor of San Francisco created the project that was the largest indoor baths at that time.

The baths had seven pools, all but one fed with ocean salt water of varying temperatures. The building was styled similar to a large conservatory with intricate iron framework and hundreds of thousands of panes of crystal glass.

Sutro was a populist and wanted his facility to be accessible to all. Entrance included use of a suit, locker and of the amenities on site. The building had 500
changing booths.

The decor was ornate Victorian with Grecian influences. The building held a large population of palm trees, ferns and other plants.

The baths also had a theater, multiple restaurants, automata displays, mummies and many other strange and exotic items on display.

The baths were a marvel at their time. Recreating them today would be a monumental and expensive
task. This makes their creation in the late 1890's even more amazing.

Find out more about the Sutro Baths at these websites.
Historysmith.com
Western Neighborhoods Project
SutroBaths.com
1897 Edison Mfg. film of the baths

Crosley reproduction radios and phones

You might have seen some of Crosley's retro turntables at national retailers. Crosley has a much larger line of reproduction audio and telephone products.

All of their items have current technology inside including USB connections, CD recorders, XM radio depending on the model.

Items range from Victorian to 50's in style so finding items to fit your decor should be easy. Their products make more design sense when your trying to finish a room with a historical design or other decor where modern items just do not work.

The line of phones will work on any system that provides a normal phone jack. So VoIP with a router hooked into your home wiring or other systems that provide a normal land line connection at the end should work with their phones. With an adapter you could even use these phones with free services like Skype. Find out more and see more products at the Crosley website.

Metallo Arts, artisan metal kitchen finishes

Metallo Arts creates custom metal finishes for kitchen cupboards and appliances. Pictured to the left is a finished dishwasher integrated into a custom kitchen. Metallo can also create artisan metal finishes for refrigerators.





Metallo's key business is in their unique range hoods. These old world styled metal hoods are certainly not your typical big box store fare.

Metallo has also begun a venture with French range manufacturer Delaubrac to do their magic on this high end range line.

Find out more at the Metallo website.

The best office suite in DC.

The office suite pictured to the left is in the Old Executive Office Building, Washington, DC. It was the background of a recent interview with outgoing VP Dick Cheney. This piqued my interest in the location that served as the backdrop for the interview. The office used by the VP, is the former office of the Secretary of the Navy. The office suite has had multiple uses over the years and are currently the official offices of the VP.


If you look in the background of the first two images you will notice a solid black Belgian marble fireplace mantle. In an up close view it is heavily carved. The room still has the original, now restored highly detailed paint scheme and plaster work. The paint scheme features classical ornaments with nautical themes worked into the green and burgundy color palette. The large light fixtures are the original gasoliers that provided for both gas and electrical lighting.


The original state of the room shows a detailed wood floor patterned with multiple species of wood. This image also provides a good view of the ceiling detail work.




A close up of the restored wall motifs between the windows. The designs are extremely detailed but due to the color choices don't become busy or distracting when viewed in the room as a whole.




You can see in the image to the left the intense level of not only painting detail but plaster work detail, much of it finished in gold leaf. The office suite is a significant departure from the typical federal style light colored rooms of the White House and similar official locations. It is enough to make you consider running for office.

Find out more about this building at the Navy's history page.

Book Review: The Queen Anne House, America's Victorian vernacular

I picked up this book over the summer, it now has a key spot on my reference shelves. The book covers 22 Queen Anne style Victorian homes in the U.S.

The examples in the book are quite different from many historical home books, the examples are more ornate and lean more toward the darker colors and more masculine styles of the period. The rooms are generally large with emphasis on woodwork and architectural details.

The photography in the book is of extremely good quality allowing for minor details within the rooms to be much easier to see. There is also plenty of historical information on construction, hardware and the evolution of home building during the era.

Bathroom Chandeliers

Apartment Therapy is showing off some recent work for a client where they used a chandelier in a half bath. Using chandeliers in unexpected places has been becoming popular as of late.

Chandeliers appear in small hallways with high ceilings, bedrooms and bathrooms. I posted a few months ago where I took an old chandelier and repurposed it into a bedside swag lamp.

This same idea could translate over to a number of decor styles. A more Victorian style chandelier, Arts & Crafts style rustic swag light fixture or a gothic styled fixture. I frequently find gothic styled units at architectural salvage stores from old churches. If your unable to change light fixtures in your space the corded swag conversion mentioned in my post would be an ideal option in places where moisture and water are not in the picture.

Dandyism

Some men still aim to dress well, Dandyism appears to be making a comeback. I am not complaining. Going out can be such a disappointment when you make an effort, go somewhere nice only to see guys in shorts, flip flops and baseball hats. I recently attended a wedding were a number of people showed up in disturbingly inappropriate dress. Haynes sweats and rubber flip flops are not proper attire for attending a wedding.

The resurgence covers everything from the Victorian aesthetic to modern day dress.
Style doesn't stop at your home so check out Dandyism.net and TheDandy.org

Dining room wall decor

I found this dining room image at Architectural Digest. The wall behind the table has a high impact but look closer, it is a very simple design.

An iron curtain rod hung high on the wall with a tab top curtain(s) in a basic fabric is used as the back drop. The images are hung using a series of hooks or chain to suspend them from the rod.

The main piece of art is the painting in the middle. You could use a featured piece of art or even an art poster if it was well framed. The surrounding frames appear to have photos or ink drawings. All of this could be done on a theme such as one main work of art by an artist and then use smaller prints from the same artist in the other frames.

This would also be easy to do with a group of frames from a thrift store painted black and filled with small prints, art images scavenged from a calendar or cards with art fronts.
Image: Architectural Digest

Jay Walker's library: something to covet.

Wired did a piece on Jay Walker, a technology millionaire and his library of awesomeness.

It is a mix of old styled library, historical science museum and a geek-fest. Walker has everything from an actual Sputnik satellite to an Enigma machine and various medical oddities.

There are more images in the Wired article including more views of the library and of various ancient books and artifacts.

Chicago Colombian Exposition, stroll the white city.

The Chicago Tribune has a slideshow of the 1893 Chicago Colombian Exposition. All that remains of this expanse of buildings is the one that is now the Museum of Science and Industry.

Most of these buildings were built with wood framing and plaster and either burned down or decayed quickly. Even by today's standards the end result done specifically for a one time event is amazing.

70's gothic dining table DIY rehab

We bought this table about ten years ago for $50, it was not in great shape but the style of the table was just too cool to pass up.

It had cracks in the legs and chunks of the wood veneer top missing. This was one of those projects I said I was going to do every spring and never did.

It was stripped and sanded and then given lots of woodfiller. That was the main reason I painted the table, staining was not possible with all the damage to the wood.


The table was taken apart and all of the pieces were given 2-3 coats of water based black paint and a coat of polyurethane. The top received three coats of poly.

The gold was painted in between the black and the top coat. The chair in the background is one of our mismatched chairs. They will be stripped and stained with an ebony stain to keep the look of the wood but tie them into the set better.

I think it will also look much better when we get the floors redone in wood to replace the vinyl tile.