The Library

The" library," as I like to call it, is merely one wall in a room which has proven notoriously difficult to decorate--I use that term loosely to mean arrange furniture. (This  house seems to demand new terms and definitions for living spaces. Can you call it a "living room" if half of it is a kitchen? The "office" might better be defined as the place to put stuff if you can't figure out where else to put it.) But I digress....

The Library concept sprang full blown into my head before we moved. At three in the morning when I seem to do my best (and worst) thinking. How do you arrange furniture in a room that is more like a hallway? How do you include some very dark, old and venerable furniture in a house that is light and modern? We built wall to wall bookshelves for all the books that have heretofore lived in four or five different places.  In front of it we placed the venerable furniture--old game table and rosewood chairs that belonged to my grandparents for OilMan's puzzles, and comfy old leather chair and reading light for a little forbidden daytime reading. It's a dark room, so we didn't try to lighten it up. Finally, we dragged out the ancestral diplomas. All it needs is a couple of old gentlemen nodding over their newspapers....well, maybe not.

Before OilMan comes back to start on a new puzzle, note Grandmother's infamously eccentric clock on the top shelf in between old volumes of Mark Twain. He ticks and strikes, but is running about a half hour fast. There is a key for making adjustments, but it seems to have disappeared. Maybe we'll just let him be eccentric. On the very top shelf are two California Indian baskets, another one one from somewhere in the Southwest along with two pots and a "storyteller" (which I liked because he is a man instead of the more traditional woman), a Zulu basket from South Africa, and the big one which I dragged back from Sri Lanka and liked because of it's general wonkiness. I was told it was made to house snakes....

My daughter thinks I have entirely too much stuff, but there are too many memories associated with not to keep it.  I'm quite pleased with my 3am vision.