Drawing Room ReDux

Hope I'm not mixing too many Orders!

Still working on refining the plans for the Drawing Room.  I found a similar cornice that Thomas Jefferson used in his own house, Monticello, and I think it is appropriate here in Merriman Park.  It features a favorite motif of Jefferson's: the ox skull(!) interchanged with a rosette medallion.  I think the ox skulls are just  too butch for words.

I'm also still stewing on how to fabricate the niches on the back wall.  They are quite a bit larger than what I can find commercially available and I have resolved to attempt to create more of my own components in the other rooms.  I suppose that I could break down and buy the smaller-sized niches.  Problem solved, right?  But I really like the larger scale of the ones in my sketches! 

(I have a fab surround from Sue Cook for the door).

 I figure, if I fail at the niches, I can always just fill the arches with mirrors!  That might be pretty awesome!  I am for sure going to put a mirror over the fireplace mantle.  Oh, I just noticed I forgot to pencil in the sconces on the pilasters.  Ooops!

This room is starting to remind me of one of the 'period rooms' at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.  That room , I recall was a Music Room from a grand house in Paris.  The walls were painted cream and all the moldings were gilded.  And it really has arched mirrors in all the corners, too!  Spooky!

Definitely going to put another corridor beyond the door opening!

 I'm not yet sure what colors I will end up using in this space, but there is plenty of time before I have to worry about that.  What do you think?   I know that a parquet wood floor would look stunning in a room like this, don't you agree? 

Anyway, back to the niches...Mirrors would be lovely, but right now I have my heart set on niches with statuary!  We're talking Roman gods & goddesses!  Thanks to everyone for your great suggestions on how to pull off the curved and rounded tops of the recesses.  Andy mentioned papier-mache and that is something I have worked with in the past.  I've never been very good at getting a smooth finish with papier-mache.  Here's a puppet head I made a few years ago out of the stuff:

Mr. Punch!

See how the surface is rippled from the layers of paper?  I just don't like that!  (Guess that's why I abandoned this project!

I made the head by sculpting it with clay and then papering it over the clay and then slicing the papier-mache, removed the clay and re-joined the halves.

Probably should have made a cast of the clay head and papier-machied the inside of the cast.  Anyway, if I attempt this technique on the niches, that's how I'll do it.

Guess I can always go back to the mirrors if the niches don't turn out!

Funny thing is that Thomas Jefferson has two similar niches in his Drawing Room at Monticello.  But while he was stationed in Paris as the new American Ambassador, he purchased two matching pier mirrors and sent them (along with a whole warehouse full of French furniture) and where do you think he hung his brand-new Paris mirrors?

That's right --he hung them over the niches and covered them up completely!

Isn't that rather ironic?

Addendum:  OK, after I posted this, there was something nagging me and I think it's that the cornice and the pillar capitals don't really go together.  I don't want the neighbors of Merriman Park to titter behind their fans that I mixed Doric and Corinthian Orders in my principal room!  So I am going to use the Thomas Jefferson cornice in the Library and chose a more apropos cornice for the Drawing Room, which, by the way, seems to be morphing into the Music Room.  Opinions?

Confidential to Karin Corbin:  W.W.K.C.D?

Pondering...

Whilst readying the Chanel mannequins for the upcoming Trunk Show at the department store where I work in Display, I  'came out' of the miniaturist closet to Patric & Susan, co-workers at the aforementioned emporium.

Our store is in the process of phasing-out the 'ye-olde'  accoutrements of yesteryear --namely : cash registers!  It's all changing over to I-Pads, darlings, who carries cash, nowadays?  Anyway, I just happened to casually mention that I was building a dollhouse and was blogging about its progress and in a whirl the I-Pad was produced and the next thing I knew my blog, Merriman Park, was staring us in the face.

I think it's safe to say that Patric is perhaps even more Obsessive-Compulsive Disordered  than yours truly --he collects decorative carrot objets, for god's sake!  (I'm not judging, I'm just saying)!  He peppered me with a barrage of questions:  "what year was Merriman Park built?  Oh, that was during slavery days--how many slaves are indentured to Merriman Park?  What? Oh, no, Merriman Park is most-definitely not a Newport residence, if its not Virginia, it's South Carolina...."

All this forced me to decide, once and for all,  Merriman Park's history.  I guess I've harbored pretensions that Merriman Park was a European residence, but Patric's grilling of me made me realize that it  is undoubtedly and unabashedly American.  I mean, the architecture of  Thomas Jefferson inspired it!  And Thomas Jefferson was from Virginia and the houses that I modeled Merriman Park after, Edgemont and  Bremo are both located in Virginia.  So that means if I accept the idea that Merriman Park is an antebellum Southern house, there were most definitely slaves afoot.

I'm having a hard time adjusting to this reality!

Am I making too much of a big deal over this?  I'm not one of those 'politically-correct' types, but it does make me think a little about my 'hero,' Thomas Jefferson, who wrote so eloquently that 'all men were created equal'  --except, I guess --his chattel!  

Wallpaper, Part II

Couldn't resist laying the marble floor down, now that it is dry.  Hope the floor is not too shiney --maybe I'll put a coat or two with a matte finish.  The Sue Cook stair brackets are just temporarily attached with wax (I love that stuff)! 

I finished the wainscot panels on either side of the mantle.  Of course there will be a skirting board as well as a chair rail all around.

I can't decide how to finish the stair landing.  Should it be marble? The front of the landing is problematic, too.  Should I add a bull-nose molding to the upper edge, or continue the skirting across it?  Decisions, decisions... I thought I'd finish the door in a dark walnut stain.

Thomas Jefferson, whose architecture inspired Merriman Park, would surely not approve of my staircase!  While he was stationed in France as American Ambassador, the French were building mansion houses in Paris with 'suppressed' staircases --they were tucked discreetly into small alcoves.  Even the grandest townhouses featured stairs crammed into the tiniest possible space.  'Grand' staircases briefly fell out of fashion and were considered a waste of space and expense.  Jefferson took that concept home and utilized it in most of his subsequent work.  So I originally planned on not showing the stair at all...

 

I'm glad I changed my mind!  (With apologies to Thomas Jefferson)!  I'm afraid the old boy would spin in his grave if I used the wrought iron balustrade from Sue Cook --but whatevs, T.J.!

 

Book Review: Thomas Jefferson, Architect --The Interactive Portfolio-- by Chuck Wills

Those of you who follow this blog and the evolution of Merriman Park know that I am a huge admirer of Thomas Jefferson's architectural legacy and that my own Merriman Park is a bit of an homage to him. So I was thrilled to pick up this book the other day.  This gorgeous tome details Jefferson's most famous works, including his residences, Monticello and Poplar Forest as well as the University of Virginia and the Virginia State Capital.  I had hoped to see a chapter on the homes he designed for his neighboring friends (Edgemont and Barboursville in particlar).  But alas, these lesser-known works are left out.

As this is The Interactive Portfolio, the book comes with copies of some of Jefferson's original drawings, all stored in vellum envelopes.  The sketches are printed on faux crumbling parchment, which is just a tad cheesy, (and reminded me of my pirate treasure map-making days as a boy, when I used to concoct messages made of tea-stained paper with burned edges, stuffed into one of mother's cast-off wine bottles and tossed into the sky-blue waters of Lake Minnetonka --the irony of  pirates sailing into Minnesota somehow escaping me). 

But I digress.

Thanks to this book, I now have two or three plans for future dollhouses.  Everything is there: moldings, trim --just waiting to be built. 

I was a little disappointed at first that the chapter on Poplar Forest showed that eight-sided gem (the first octagonal house in America) with its roof in its unrestored state.  But as I already have books on Poplar Forest detailing its restoration, I am happy to have a record of it in "before" mode.  I saw in a magazine that  they recently repainted the dining room of Monticello in a very intense (but historically accurate) chrome-yellow, and this edition shows the older, and dare I say the more preferable "wedgewood blue" scheme.

Thomas Jefferson, Architect --The Interactive Portfolio--  is a must-have for fans of one of our country's Founding Fathers and for devotes of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century architecture. 

Eureka Moment!

As I was nodding off the other night I realized that the altered plans for my dollhouse, Merriman Park, were more closely starting to resemble a different Thomas Jefferson-inspired residence: Bremo (1817-1820).

Bremo was for many years attributed to Jefferson --even by noted scholars. The home is now credited to Jefferson's primary builder, John Nielson.

The major differences between my design and Bremo are that my version includes a pediment over the central mass, and my cornice is not as pronounced. But I REALLY LIKE the stark simplicity of Bremo, so perhaps even more changes to my plan are afoot...

The Inspiration

My dollhouse will be my interpretation of an actual home which was designed by Thomas Jefferson for one of his gentleman-farmer neighbors. Jefferson was not only one of our country's Founding Fathers, but was also a talented amateur architect. He based the plans for his own homes, Monticello and Poplar Forest on Palladio's iconic Villa Rotunda (which happens to be one of my personal fave buildings). The plan he presented to his neighbor in 1805-06 was also an interpretation of the Rotunda.

Here is a photograph of my "inspiration house!"