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Why We Build: Staying in Our Place, a blog about building a new house

Where Would You Like to Live?

The Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends has provided a report, Suburbs Not Most Popular, But Suburbanites Most Content

"Ever since there have been suburbs there have been harsh critiques of suburbs -- a common one being that they are suffocating places where people live lives of quiet desperation.

"Well, most suburbanites apparently never got that memo.

"Suburbanites are significantly more satisfied with their communities than are residents of cities, small towns or rural areas, according to a Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends survey that explores what Americans like — and don't like — about the places where they live.

"The survey asks respondents to rate their community on eight characteristics: job opportunities; cost of living; a place to raise children; recreational and outdoor activities; shopping; the climate; cultural activities; and opportunities to meet people and make friends. It also asks for an overall rating.

"Responses to all nine questions were aggregated into a single scale. Overall, 42% of suburban residents give their community high marks on this combined scale, compared with just 34% of city residents, 29% of rural residents and 25% of small town residents."

 

Renaissance House

"You should not behave as I have seen some women do, who make such a din, and banging and moving about of tables and chairs, and so much noise of plates and knives, that the guest expects a sumptuous meal, and at the end realises that the mountain has brought forth a mouse." — From The kitchen

The Victoria and Albert Museum's online collections includes the Renaissance House, an interactive part of their At Home in Renaissance Italy exhibit. A cross section of the house is on view to introduce the activities.

Casa

House and household were both called casa. The 'family' that comprised the casa included not just the nuclear unit of parents and children, but also many blood relatives and servants.

The casa was a hub of activity - domestic, economic and social - and during the Renaissance it accommodated increasingly specialised spaces and objects. Visitors would generally be shown the first floor or piano nobile. This included a suite of rooms leading from the sala (reception room), to the camera (bedroom), and then the scrittoio (study). The basic distinction between sala and camera was visible at almost all social levels right across Italy.

In grand houses there were also rooms for specific activities such as music, dining and small parties, as well as areas that most visitors would not see: the kitchen, cellars, attics and servants' quarters.

Guide your guests around the house and in particular show them some of your possessions, either new or beautiful, but in such a way that it will be received as a sign of your politeness and domesticity, and not arrogance: something that you will do as if showing them your heart.

From a conduct book for new brides (Pietro Belmonte, Istitutione della sposa, 1587)

The activities that are offered are Design your own Renaissance room; Play the Biribissi Bingo Game; Play the Mystery Object Quiz.

 

Rocking Chairs on Parade

Designboom presents a celebration of the rocking chair. The timeline reveals that there were even adult size cradles (pictured an 1810 US example) manufactured by the Shaker communities " for gently rocking weak or aged invalids, a ceremony of the circle of life — from birth, to death."

"We all know that the rocking chair is a distinctly american passion, its origins, however, are less clear. adding skates or rockers to the bottom of chairs probably evolved from the cradle and the rocking horse, which both predate the rocking chair. apparently no one thought to apply the idea to furniture for adults until the eighteenth century. the word 'rocker' originated in the 15th century and indicated the person responsible for rocking the cradle. in the 18th century it also meant an orator who put others to sleep. anyway, it was not until 1787 that the earliest dated citation ' ROCKING CHAIR' appeared in the oxford english dictionary for usage."

A section of the site, 'on their rockers', displays photos of US Presidents in their particular rockers, as well as an artist (Picasso) in his. We're glad to see that Napoleon had one at his Elba exile residence. 'off their rockers' is devoted to showing how painters used rocking chairs in their art.

The International Design competition winners are there to be admired or spurned with even more available from the exhibit.

Irion Company's Furniture

Fine Woodworking magazine featured the work of a company named Irion Furniture Makers for a particular customer in the article titled Greatest Commission Ever which requires a subscription. However, there's a photo gallery of a number of the 90 pieces including four breakfronts, three secretaries, three high chests, 15 tables, four tall clocks and over 30 chairs.

Scan the slideshow of pieces made for a Pennsylvania house which is 35,000 square feet in size. There's also a short piece available on the Irion Furniture company itself.

The Winterthur Collection was visited before some of the furniture was made as well as collections at New York City's Metropolitan Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Excerpt

From Daniel McGinn's book, House Lust:

"For the last few years, everywhere you turn Americans have been talking about, valuing, scheming over, envying, shopping for, refinancing, or just plain ogling homes. The writer Daphne Merkin has described this widespread yearning as Real Estate Lust, “a condition whose symptoms include a compulsive scanning of real estate ads and incessant discussions of who paid what for how much, as well as a fascination with the size and shape — down to the number of bedrooms, closets and bathroom windows — of apartments and houses that belong to people other than ourselves.” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson diagnoses the condition as the moment when “a house or an apartment becomes not just a place of shelter or an emblem of status or even a considered investment, but an obsession that haunts us no less intensely than Vladimir Nabokov’s nymphet Lolita tortured the imagination of poor, sick Humbert.”

"To my ear, “real estate lust” sounds too economic, too transaction-oriented. It’s too focused on profits-and-losses, and doesn’t capture all the complicated, non-financial emotions that come into play when we think about our homes. Most of us aren’t in love with the game of real estate — we’re obsessed with the trophy at the end. So I prefer a simpler coinage: House Lust.

"Rachael Brownell, Andy and Susie Sincock, and Nicole and Marc Lombardi suffer from it. Maybe you do, too. As comedian Jeff Foxworthy might put it, if you can instantly identify whether a countertop is made of Argentine Balmoral or Giallo Imperial granite, you may have House Lust. If you’ve visited the website Zillow, which estimates home values, and plugged in the addresses of friends, co-workers, and exes to see how much their houses are worth, there’s a good chance you have House Lust. If, upon hearing that a friend has bought a new home, you can’t resist asking its square footage, the lot size, and the year it was built, it’s very possible that you have House Lust."

Read the entire excerpt at Daniel McGinn's site

Electronic Swatchbook

The Powerhouse Museum of Science and Design in Sydney, Australia holds an electronic swatchbook of fabric designs in the public domain gathered from the past 300 years. They include fabric, braids and laces, dating from the 1830s to the 1920s.

Another home resource at Powerhouse is DesignHub. Part of the interior and furniture section of DesignHub

The patterns on this site are in the public domain in Australia.

Exhibition

From Dairy to Doorstep;
Milk Delivery in New England 1860 — 1960

Washington, DC's National Building Museum in conjuction with Historic New England has presented an online exhibit of a phenomenon that an older generation knows and appreciates: milk production and home delivery:

"Two hundred years ago New England milk and cream traveled only a short distance from the cow to the table. In the hundred years between 1860 and 1960, people moved away from farms and cows, and dairying changed from women’s work at home into a mechanized industry. A delivery person — the milkman — brought dairy products to villages, towns, and cities. At first, milk route men, and occasionally women, came in wagons with milk cans and dippers. Later, the wagons were replaced by fleets of trucks rattling with glass bottles. Without milkmen, generations of families in cities and towns would not have had fresh milk in their coffee, cream on their cereal, or pudding for dessert. Infants would not have had cows’ milk to fill their bottles."

"In the same time period, dairying and the milk delivery system had to adapt to change. New processes and government regulation made commercial milk from far away dairies safe to drink, and science and mass advertising persuaded homemakers of milk’s nutritional value. By the 1960s, social, economic, and industrial changes caused milk delivery to shift to the self-service supermarket, and platoons of home delivery milkmen said goodbye."

(You knotice that the gender of the delivery person is male; the coming of women's liberation didn't include the era of milk delivery.)

“As soon as milk comes into the house it should be boiled, as it is a notorious carrier of disease germs .... Use an earthenware pitcher and let the milk remain standing in the same after cooling ... .Boiling and cooling it rapidly afterwards will keep it sweet for 24 hours ... and the time may be further extended by keeping the milk pitcher set in a dish of cold water.”

Eighteen pages online of text and illustration take the reader through the decades of milk production and delivery.

Where did we last have milk delivered? Two years ago to the doorstep of a cottage in Snowshill, England.

Article

Roberta McReynolds, Soap Opera: Determination won over my apprehension over handling alkalies. If my grandmother could make soap for her family a hundred years ago, then I could do it, too. Besides, I had decided to draw the line at rendering my own fat from butchered animals as she had done, so how hard could the saponification process be?

The Art of the Paperweight

Paperweights (and particularly the millefiori technique) have always attracted us. The Corning Museum of Glass is featuring Worlds Within, exhibiting glass paperweights from the mid-19th century to the present.

"More than 180 paperweights and paperweight-related items from around the world illustrate a variety of significant changes in paperweight making since 1845, including experimentation with new forms and techniques, and the development of the idea of the paperweight as a microcosm containing artistically rendered scenes and figures."

"The earliest paperweights appeared in Europe in the mid-1840s. Venetian glassmaker Pietro Bigaglia created and exhibited the first signed and dated weights at the Vienna Industrial Exposition in 1845. He, like other paperweight makers of the time, revived many ancient glassworking techniques to create his weights."

"In 1851, Prince Albert of England sponsored the Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, housed at the Crystal Palace in London, to showcase international artistic innovations, some of which were paperweights. The Vienna Industrial Exposition, The Great Exhibition and subsequent world fairs played a significant role in introducing paperweights to the world."

"Following the Great Exhibition, paperweights were produced in many countries, but French designs were the most widely varied and finely executed."

An intriguing part of the Corning site is the section dedicated to teachers. There we found, alongside activities that will engage our grandchildren, the following 'secret instructions':

When you set up the foundation of a good furnace to make glass, you first search in a favorable month for a day of good omen, and only then can you set up the foundation of the furnace. As soon as you have finished building the furnace you go and place Kubu-images there. No insider or stranger should enter the building; an unclean person must not even pass in front of the images. You regularly perform libation offerings before them. On the day when you plan to make (glass), you make a sheep sacrifice before the Kubu-images (religions statues); you place juniper incense on the incense burner; you pour out a libation (drink honoring a deity) of honey and liquid butter; only then can you make the fire in the hearth of the furnace and place the glass in the furnace.

And, of course, there is the Corning shop.

"A Prairie School Gem"

"The Purcell-Cutts House is one of the most outstanding examples of Prairie School architecture in the country. Architects William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie designed the house for Purcell, his wife, Edna, and the first of their two children; it was built in 1913. Purcell wanted a house that would support a modern way of life for his family. He and Elmslie followed architect Louis Sullivan's principles of organic architecture to create an original and beautiful home that would be a strong contrast to the revival-style houses popular at the time. Both from Chicago, they had worked with Sullivan and learned these organic principles firsthand."

So begins the introduction to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts online tour of the Purcell-Cutts House, a part of the Unified Vision: Architecture and Design of the Prairie School exhibit. Prominent architects examined are: William Gray Purcell, George Grant Elmslie, Frank Lloyd Wright, and George Washington Maher.

Visit the first floor, second floor, the 'nuts and bolts' section (including a peek at their laundry chute) and a Elmslie's sawed-wood design on "the beam-end at the house's front entry. It contains an abstracted organic design (cut out by a skilled workman in Chicago) and the phrase 'Gray Days and Gold.' " Don't overlook the octopus gas furnace.

From the William Purcell's own notes:

"The daily use of these rooms reflects very definitely the background against which they were framed. On fine Minnesota winter mornings when the first level sun rays come slanting over the snowy house tops just at breakfast, the table time and again is laid in front of the Living Room fire. The electric toaster sits on the end of the hearth and the coffee and cheese and jam come down from the kitchen above at their leisure. On Sunday evenings the great chairs and the littlest chairlets are drawn up around the hearth; the bread and milk, cookies and apples are had with stories and chatting, and with the firelight for company."

And do take the architectural tour of other Minnesota Prairie School examples.

Glacier Circle

This Davis, California co-housing community was recently profiled in The New York Times. We have referred to co-housing a number of times at Seniorwomen.com and like to highlight those that have received some publicity.

The philosophy of Glacier Circle is described in full at their website with an emphasis on the mission, membership and group process statements:

Group’s Mission Statement
The mission of Glacier Circle Senior Covenant which is read out loud before every meeting.

We, the members of Glacier Circle, covenant: 

  • To listen deeply and thoughtfully in our dialogs, mindful that our relationships are sacred.

  • To be patient with each other, appreciating our differing gifts and welcoming creative ideas. When necessary, we will confront courageously with love.

  • We agree to assume appropriate leadership roles and to participate fully in the group process.

  • While we value our time together, we also respect our members’ need for privacy.

  • We will remember to assume the good intent of others and to strive to treat other members as well as ourselves with loving kindness.

Membership

Members range in age from 70 to 84. Most of the members are now retired. Their professions include:

  • Three women are psychotherapists

  • School teacher and watercolor painter

  • University professor and writer

  • Physicist

  • Education college professor

  • Environmental health scientist.

Group Process

The community makes decisions by consensus. Members of the Glacier Circle community have known each other for a long time — in some cases for 40-50 years. Group members see each other regularly through social activities outside of the cohousing project. Some are members of a dream group, others are in a writing group while a handful are in a women’s group together.

Read the rest of Glacier Circle's community description as well as sources for further contact and information.

 

Book Excerpt

I can't help it if I want to live in the past — the time forty years ago when there was still some wide-open space into which to insert some dreaming, and still some darkness at night over it. There was quiet, the birthright of all us animals, and somehow there was more time in a day than there is now. The world belonged then to the people who lived in it.

We nostalgists are bravely marching into battle, eager to face the advancing tanks of human history. Our vernal tendencies to believe all endings are happy ever after prevented us from seeing the rotting carcass of truth right in front of us: "progress" is just another word for larceny. Now our hearts are filled with the strength of righteousness. Take up arms in readiness: our plastic cocktail swords glint green and red in the sun. The war correspondent's reports to the home front make you laugh at our fatal narcissism. Don't you know that you can't win? And why would you even want to? We're not like every other species that has inhabited the same ecological niche for hundreds of thousands of years without the need for an eight-bedroom house where three used to do. We alone do not emit those mysterious pheromones that slow procreation when the carrying capacity of the land has been reached.

Our neural pathways were formed by millions of years of existence in communities of our fellows where daily congregation and rituals and exercises made us what we became, and thus whole. Then a few years ago, give or take, they thought up the fetishization of personal property and the automobile and the installation of industry at the tippytop of the rights chain, and bingo: no more meeting places and no more walking and no more breathing of air and viewing of sky and mythmaking to explain the experience. Now you drive to a slushy parking lot and gingerly step into Walgreens for a newspaper and some Rolaids and quickly back the car out after assuring the concerned clerk (he asked, after all) that you're fine today and equally concerned about his psychic well-being (you asked, after all). You then leave the site of what was formerly a heavily used sidewalk in front of a bank, a café, and a shoe store that your grandparents, lacking a car but living nearby, used to walk to. Invisible hands reached down and changed it all around like chess pieces, and you don't know whom to bite. No one else seems to have noticed.

Read the rest of the excerpt from The Place You Love Is Gone: Progress Took It Away by Melissa Pierson at the Orion Online site.

Object Stories

A section of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London is devoted to object stories providing a narration for some of the pieces from their furniture and furnishings collection.

Many of the pieces you may not have heard of: The Isokon Penguin Donkey Bookcase: It was named the Donkey because it had four legs and two panniers. The space between the side-compartments could be used for magazines. The Donkey impressed Allen Lane, the publisher of the new Penguin paperbacks. He inserted 100,000 leaflets for it into Penguin books and the newly renamed Isokon Penguin Donkey looked set to be a great success. The shelves in the bookcase were just the right size to house the distinctive orange-covered Penguin paperbacks. Unfortunately the Second World War broke out at exactly the time that the Donkey was launched. Both the publication of Penguin books and the production of the Donkey ceased. Only about a hundred Donkeys were made, which all sold very fast." 

The Juxon Chair from 1661: "Two family traditions have linked the chair with William Juxon who, as Bishop of London, attended Charles I on the scaffold at his execution in 1649 and was present at the coronation of Charles II. It was indisputable that the chair belonged to William Juxon as it had been passed down through his family but it was not clear as to whether either of the two family stories held any truth."

"One of the stories which had passed through time was that it was in this chair that King Charles sat at his execution and that ‘his Majesty kneeled on the stool when he received the fatal stroke’. This led to the suggestion that the stains on the seat of the chair were that of blood. After the execution, so the story goes, Juxon took the chair, as part payment, to his home in Little Compton where it remained until 1794 when it was then sold to a Mr Sands. The second story relates that the chair has a connection with another Charles; this time Charles II at whose coronation in 1661 Juxon was present, as Archbishop of Canterbury, and that it was after this occasion that Juxon took the chair home."

The Kozma Drinks Trolley: " The history of a little drinks trolley, given to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1997, links it to the great theme of emigration at the end of the Second World War. In 1947 both its owner and its designer left war-torn Hungary ... This drinks trolley came from a flat in Budapest, Hungary, and was added to the V&A collection to represent Hungarian modernism, and the work of a woman designer. ... With the aid of a colleague at the Applied Arts Museum in Budapest we discovered Susan Orlay, now in her eighties, living in a Sydney suburb. She confirmed the piece was her design from almost 60 years previous. She wrote to the Museum:

'Selecting the same profession as my father (interior decorating) I was very much under his influence and whatever I achieved I can only thank him. To be in such illustrious company makes me feel humble, but through my fathers’ spirit I accept the great honour to be exhibited in the V&A.' "

Other stories, those about a Korean Red Lacquer Chest, Queen Elizabeth Virginal, a symptuous Lawson cabinet, a confession by a young woman in the form of a 19c sampler and the surpising geometry of the Ardabil carpet can be read at the site.

Grammar of Ornament

Trained as an architect, Englishman Owen Jones (1809-1874) became fascinated by Classical architectural polychromy drawing upon what he saw while visiting Egypt, Turkey and Spain where, in particular, he studied the Alhambra:

Jones believed passionately that the 19th century should produce a recognizable style of its own that would result not simply from the study of past styles but from the adoption of new materials. In attempting to carry through this ideology in his own work in the 1840s Jones relied heavily on Islamic sources and was much criticized as a result.

Jones' Grammar of Ornament developed from lectures he delivered and he "evolved his principles into 37 axioms of design, which appeared in his influential publication the Grammar of Ornament (London, 1856), illustrated with examples of historical styles of ornament." Today, many of these principles still can be applied to decorative and decorating settings.


Articles

"The Main Water Supply Valve: How to Find it and Shut it Off

As the wife of a military officer, Kathy knew that home is where the military sends you, so she was careful never to get too attached to a house. She also knew from experience that as soon as her husband boarded his ship, something in their base housing would break. Not wanting to join the ranks of a long waiting list for repairs, Kathy decided to start learning how to fix things herself. Her first order was locating the house's main water supply valve after the kitchen faucet broke off in her hand. It was rough seas at first, but now it's smooth sailing ahead."

"Finding the Valve

Fresh water enters into your home through the main water supply line. The valve controlling the water flow through the line is typically found in the basement or utility room near the water meter, water heater, or on the front wall closest to the street. In older apartment buildings, the main water supply valve is located in the basement. However, in some new apartment buildings, main water supply valves are located on each floor in the utility room."

"When you locate the main water supply valve, place an I.D. tag on it."

From Dare to Repair by Julie Sussman and Stehanie Glakas-Tenet

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