A Candle-Snuffer and A Kitchen Tour

My hunt for a vintage candle-snuffer began in late January. I had left a Christmas platter (The Old Curiosity Shop) by the kitchen sink, flanked by two candlesticks, for winter cheer. I was on my third pair of Classic Green tapers I order by the box, burning them at dusk while preparing supper. (I also buy Wedgewood Blue for my dining table.)

 One night RH blew them out for me, not pulling them forward and cupping a hand behind it as I do. He puffed them out with all his lung power and wax flew onto the window glass, something I discovered the next day.

That began my online search for a vintage candle-snuffer but none struck my fancy. One night I was flipping through one of the old magazines from my vintage magazine collection, a House & Garden, January 1967 (our young married days). 

"Notes for the Hostess" is my favorite monthly column in the old magazine, where I read about tempting objects for the hostess to purchase. One object was a "polychromed wrought iron candle snuffer with a butterfly on top." I wanted one.

It would be useless to search for one on eBay, right? I put in exactly those words and found:

"Old Vintage Tole Painted Wrought Iron Metal Flower with Butterfly Candle Snuffer."

It was darling and only $20, not an exact replica of the 1967 one but near enough. When it arrived I knew it would have a permanent place by my sink, with a change of plates seasonally.

My spring plate was Royal Doulton's Countess pattern and I changed the candlesticks to a 1980s Polish pair I've had for years. 

I have three plates and a large platter of the Countess plate, bought in the 1990s in Blowing Rock, NC as a gift for my mother when her eyes lit up finding the platter in an antique shop on Main Street. And one day came when she said her "cooking the turkey days" were behind her as my sisters in Florida began hosting Thanksgiving.

I kept this plate up until June when I spotted this one at our local antique mall.

We have jillions of blackberries in our front hedge row every summer and this plate, 'Blue Ridge' from Southern Potteries, whispered Take me home.

It says Summer to me.

With supper being in daylight in the summer, the candles don't get lit until after-dinner cleanup when RH and I pause whatever show we're watching. He puts leftovers away while I load the dishwasher and one night I began taking pictures of our kitchen at night when it might not show that I hadn't swept the floor.

After many variations of styling my open kitchen shelves, I put practicality before pretty and cleared the lower shelf to hold all the jars of things I use regularly. 

But be sure to notice the vintage tall candle of a bunch of asparagus on the top left end, a gift from RH's brother to me. I swooned over it and two large vintage candles of orange coral now over my china cabinet.

Even though I think copper in a kitchen is the ultimate, most of my copper molds went to a daughter-in-law except for the few I actually use (aspic lover that I am) and keep in a cabinet. 

Instead I've put up two pretty silver molds and a lid with drainage holes I bought at Goodwill. The lid doesn't fit any of my pots but does look pretty hung on the wall. And the 1960s Aladdin lamp is one of seven, most given to us back then for Christmases by friends where the husband was an executive at Aladdin. And there are others in our children's homes.

 The right end of the shelves, built by RH and his brother when we moved here to Home Hill, now hold rices and jars of Rancho Gordo beans, my favorite. 

There are three pieces of furniture that fit in my kitchen, giving me at least a partly "unfitted kitchen" that I always wanted. We found the dry sink at our local antique mall and it holds baskets of food behind doors and special dishes on top.

I keep the Blue Willow out for everyday use.

And I've been using these pretty Independence Hall ironstone plates since the Fourth of July, ironically Made in England. You guessed it, a gift from RH's brother.

But the sweetest gift of all from my brother-in-law was this collection of pie birds!

I adore them all but my favorite is the pheasant, front row right. I haven't used them yet, afraid that baking will discolor or crack them. Anyone have experience with using a pie bird? I would like to use them for my chicken pies as I know they were originally meant for the meat pies of England, not dessert pies.

Not that I make many chicken pies these days or even dessert pies but I do have a freestanding cabinet topped with a nice marble slab that is perfect for rolling out pie crusts. This piece has one shallow drawer and two deep ones and hold so many of my baking things.

The third piece of furniture in our galley kitchen is a taller chest of drawers that RH used for his tools at our old house. Now his tools are limited to the bottom two drawers and I get the top three for spices, etc., which I think is fair since he now has a large workshop out back to keep them in.

On top is the microwave that men can't live without, a beautiful blue bowl holding tea towels, a large gorgeous blue fruitcake tin given to me by a daughter-in-law who used to keep her button collection in it, topped with a green cabbage bowl, and a lamp. And above it all is a print I fell in love with at the antique mall. It's appropriately named 'Vegetables' by Helen Paul and must be one of her older prints as I can't find it online. The colors of the vegetables make me so happy.

 

I have to show you my new (old) blue KitchenAid mixer, again, a gift from you know who. It's so pretty! And I finally solved the problem of a dusty mixing bowl vs. hating the sight of plastic wrap over it by putting a pretty vintage Spode plate on the bowl, Spode's Pink Camilla.

 I've circled the room now except for showing the fridge and trash can. There are other sweet items in this room that were gifts from my sisters too. My house would be half empty without the generosity of others.

RH finished washing a large pan.

 Time for him to have his bedtime bowl of ice cream.

No more worries of RH blowing candle wax on the kitchen window.

Now he can snuffle the candlelight.

On Becoming Serene, and Blogging

Ever wish you had taken computer courses before becoming a blogger? Perhaps you did just that.

But I, I whose ignorance assured her that she who had to be dragged into the computer age from her trusty typewriter could throw herself headlong into the hypnotizing world of blogging, went ahead, understanding absolutely nothing about computers.

I believe in doing things too soon. In striking before the iron is hot, in leaping before one has looked, in loving before one has been introduced.

      Beverley Nichols in Down the Garden Path

Are you like that about a passion? And do you have your blogging degree in passion only or in a tech education?

And if you answer "in passion" do you ever suffer a crise de nerfs when technology comes crashing down around you as it did on me recently?

What do you do about it, pray tell?

Here's how I handled my own crise de nerfs , my faithful, patient friends. That is, after I had taken hours and hours of help out of my son's life, by phone and by text, to fix the major problems.

Every day after trying to fix the rest of my computer problems I would run out of the office that I grandly call My Writing Room and grab one of these books to take to my bedroom reading chair.

I believe that these books I ordered one at a time during January and thus far in February have been sent to me by the Wise Physician who knew so well what I would need during the attack on my nerves by the evil god of technology (and yes, I could name him here but won't), along with his minions Pop-Up-Ads and My-Computer-Keys-Are-Stuck-in-Molasses.

"How slow can I go?

Very Very S.....L....O....W."

  

And there was their pal HaHaHa who signed me out of everything I had signed into for years and then threw away forgotten passwords set eons ago.

And lest I forget another wannabe kingpin, Mr. Scrolling? That function became a test, no, a con-test to see how much time could pass before either the icon stopped spinning or my head did.

"I can't do this, it's driving me crazy," I screeched to BreeBree and James Mason as I stormed away from my desk and out of the room of torture that it sits in. 

And then I sought an antidote. Either I could climb the walls or eat Rocky Road ice cream or grab one of these old four books, House & Garden's Guide to Interior Decoration.

Page by page I disappeared into the world of homes of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

Each time I was transported so fully to homes of those years that no LSD trip of the 1960s, if I had ever been someone who did such a thing, could possibly have offered as much mind-blowing happy feelings, such heart's and mind's ease as these four books offered.

 

I studied pages on furniture styles and table setting and terraces and it became as real to me as if I were personally expecting the garden club women to luncheon before showing them around my own Eden. 

And at last I would emerge from that world into my own, a far gentler woman.

And instead of being the woman whose chin is dragging the ground like this poor soul who can so easily become my alter ego...

 [story herehttps://awindow-lookacrosstheway.blogspot.com/2013/02/february-faces-white-swan.html]

Instead of her, I would become more like my other more desired alter ego....

 [story here https://awindow-lookacrosstheway.blogspot.com/2019/02/i-

dreamed-i-wore-pink-raincoat.html]

Thankfully, all at last seems well here in my blogging world, after the mysterious, complicated technical procedure called "Restart Computer" took place.

Who knew?

Now, dear reader, what turns you from a sad frantic maniac into a serene goddess of the hearth? Would you share a secret cure with us?

And what is it that brings on your own crise de nerfs? 

[No, I don't speak French. I'm betting that phrase has stayed in my mind from an old Edith Wharton novel.]

  

The Maine Cottage of Sister Parish

The January 1967 issue of House & Garden featured the canary yellow Dark Harbor, Maine cottage of Mrs. Henry Parish II, or Sister Parish as we think of her. She was not referred to as Sister Parish in the article. I wonder if anyone other than her family and closest friends dared call her that to her face. Did her famous business partner Albert Hadley, Jr. call her that? Mr. Hadley, by the way, we Nashvillians claim as a hometown boy, Hadley's Bend being named after his family.

The much missed House & Garden misspelled Mrs. Parish's name, putting two Rs in Parish all through the article so I'll leave that extra R in when quoting the magazine. Was Mrs. Parish so unknown then that the mistake was easily made? If she was, that didn't last long, especially after she decorated the White House for First Lady Jackie Kennedy.

Evidently this article struck an immediate chord with readers and soon many were eyeing their gloomy brown furniture with a gleam in their eyes and a paintbrush in their hands. White enamel paint flew off the shelves and a new decorating style spread quickly.

Here in my forty-seven year old copy of H & G is the 1967 version of Mrs. Parish's Dark Harbor, Maine cottage. Golden oak is hidden underneath the white enamel furniture in her dining room. She bought 100 pieces of it for $100. Got her money's worth, don't you think?

"A paradox among interior designers, Mrs. Parrish believes 

in the un-decorated look."

The rug in the comfortable sitting room is a beauty, and the furniture looks exactly what should be in a summer cottage, pieces that have been handed down through the years. 

I really do have rug envy looking at these pictures.

Mrs. Parish's style consists of "propping paintings instead of hanging them,

perching them on window sills, and mixing (rather than matching)

anything with everything."

In her bedroom and in the guest rooms upstairs, mattresses and bedding was comfortable and luxurious. I would love to have been a guest in that cottage back then. Would I have been as intimidated in 1967 as I know I would have been in her later years? Probably. Mrs. Parish was from a wealthy society family as well as being an interior designer. 

To quote F. Scott Fitzgerald: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."

"Mattresses, box springs, and their respective trappings are never allowed

to age beyond their prime…The bathrooms are full of towels an inch thick,

luscious sponges, dressing gowns for guests, and…

electric towel warmers."

House & Garden said that since "Mrs. Parrish believes that a static house soon becomes tiresome, she changes something every day." Ha! Mrs. Parish and I do have something in common! I'll blame her when R.H. wonders why I constantly want to rearrange a table, a room, or all the rooms.

"Visually, the room is a delight because she has indulged her fondness

for pattern with four different floral motifs."

I loved that living room when I saw it in 1967, I love it now, and I loved all future versions of it pictured in magazine spreads.

 But if I did have a Dark Harbor, Maine cottage today, I think I would call on Tom Scheerer for an updated version like his room below:

[source]

Mr. Scheerer said: "I was going for the old-fashioned Maine of Sister Parish and her crowd--cheerful, lively, improvisational, and slightly eccentric."

Tom Scheerer had me at this quote when interviewed by House Beautiful:

"Don't make too much trouble for yourself.

Work with what you have and get on with it.

Live life now, 

rather than after a torturous renovation."

I hope you enjoyed seeing the rooms of Sister Parish from 1967. You can't begin to imagine how recent that seems to me. Wasn't it only yesterday?

Remember, "Don't make too much trouble for yourself."

[All pictures and quotes about Mrs. Parish were of course from the January 1967 issue of House & Garden.]