The Antique Victorian Furniture Blog

I just came across a blog called Slip Into Something Victorian. Its most recent post is about Lizzie Borden. Mystery and the Victorian era sure do go hand in hand.

Denise Eagan, the author of the post, recently visited Lizzie’s Victorian home, which is located in Fall River, Massachusetts. It was in this house back in 1892 that Lizzie’s father and stepmother were found murdered in exceptionally brutal fashion. Lizzie was brought to trial but acquitted.

To this day the crime is unsolved, although Lizzie remains the primary suspect in the minds of many. The post gives a very nice summary of the circumstances of the mystery, with some interesting details about such things as possible sexual abuse and the miserly nature of Lizzie’s father.

And here’s something you probably didn’t know. The home today is a bed and breakfast. You can actually sleep in Lizzie’s room, in a nice antique Victorian bed, I might add! I don’t think I would shut my eyes for a second, and not just because I was admiring all the furniture in the room.

Slip Into Something Victorian contains a gallery of pictures, among which are an excellent selection taken at the Borden house. There’s a lot of antique Victorian furniture in there. You’ll see beds, chairs, mirrors, dressers, a dining room table, a striking medallion back sofa, and more – all within the confines of one of the world’s eeriest Victorian homes.

And maybe you’ll be inspired to visit the home and spend the night. I understand you’ll be treated to the breakfast the Bordens had that morning. The contents of Abby Borden’s stomach actually provided an important clue as to the time of her subsequent murder. Food for thought.

You can read the post here. If you have trouble finding the picture gallery, click here.

And here are some earlier posts of mine involving mystery of one kind or another: Nov. 24, Nov. 20, Nov. 17, Nov. 16, Nov. 13.

Technorati Tags: Antique, Bed, Beds, Chairs, Dresser, Furniture, Home, House, lizzie borden, Mirror, Mystery, Sofa, Table, Victorian

Here’s a passage from Wilkie Collins, the great Victorian author of detective fiction. This is from a short story called “A Traveler’s Story of A Terribly Strange Bed,” originally published in 1852. The room described here is in a gambling house in Paris, but that strange bed is very British. It has a sinister functionality, too, which you’ll discover if you read the story.

“I raised myself on my elbow, and looked about the room–which was brightened by a lovely moonlight pouring straight through the window–to see if it contained any pictures or ornaments that I could at all clearly distinguish. While my eyes wandered from wall to wall, a remembrance of Le Maistre’s delightful little book, “Voyage autour de ma Chambre,” occurred to me. I resolved to imitate the French author, and find occupation and amusement enough to relieve the tedium of my wakefulness, by making a mental inventory of every article of furniture I could see, and by following up to their sources the multitude of associations which even a chair, a table, or a wash-hand stand may be made to call forth.

In the nervous unsettled state of my mind at that moment, I found it much easier to make my inventory than to make my reflections, and thereupon soon gave up all hope of thinking in Le Maistre’s fanciful track–or, indeed, of thinking at all. I looked about the room at the different articles of furniture, and did nothing more.

There was, first, the bed I was lying in; a four-post bed, of all things in the world to meet with in Paris–yes, a thorough clumsy British four-poster, with the regular top lined with chintz–the regular fringed valance all round–the regular stifling, unwholesome curtains, which I remembered having mechanically drawn back against the posts without particularly noticing the bed when I first got into the room. Then there was the marble-topped wash-hand stand, from which the water I had spilled, in my hurry to pour it out, was still dripping, slowly and more slowly, on to the brick floor. Then two small chairs, with my coat, waistcoat, and trousers flung on them. Then a large elbow-chair covered with dirty-white dimity, with my cravat and shirt collar thrown over the back. Then a chest of drawers with two of the brass handles off, and a tawdry, broken china inkstand placed on it by way of ornament for the top. Then the dressing-table, adorned by a very small looking-glass, and a very large pincushion. Then the window–an unusually large window. Then a dark old picture, which the feeble candle dimly showed me. It was a picture of a fellow in a high Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of towering feathers. A swarthy, sinister ruffian, looking upward, shading his eyes with his hand, and looking intently upward–it might be at some tall gallows at which he was going to be hanged. At any rate, he had the appearance of thoroughly deserving it.”

I absolutely love the remark about the “multitude of associations.” Do you notice how the ornate beauty of the sentences written by Victorian authors closely resembles the beauty of antique Victorian furniture?

Technorati Tags: Bed, Chair, Chest, Drawers, Furniture, Literature, Mystery, Table, Victorian, Wilkie Collins

Back on October 23, I posted about an article written by antique collector Ben Mijuskovic. In that article, which appeared in the Maine Antique Digest, Ben gave a short history of antique Victorian furniture in America and then told the story of a particular Victorian chair that he and his wife had found. If you haven’t read that one, you can find it here.

Ben has since called my attention to another of his articles, which came out in Antiques and Fine Art. Like the previous article, this one is about a Victorian chair, the “loveliest Victorian chair” as the title tells us. Also like the previous one, this article is on a higher intellectual plane than your average writing on antiques.

What I didn’t know about Ben when I wrote that first post is that he’s a professor of philosophy as well as a collector of Victorian antiques. His expertise in philosophy stretches from the ancient to the modern. He does research into ethics, existentialism, and the philosophy of religion and could tell us a thing or two about Hume, Hegel, and Husserl.

We’re just fortunate enough that Ben is also captivated by antique Victorian furniture and enjoys sharing his experiences with it. The depth of Ben’s insight is evident in every sentence he writes. In this article he relates how he and his wife found an antique Victorian chair at their favorite antique shop in San Francisco. In keeping with the theme of mystery that has lately crept into The Antique Victorian Furniture Blog, the chair defied identification. Ben and his wife promptly bought the chair and then set out to get some answers.

I don’t want to give away too much here. It’s Ben’s mystery, and he tells a charming story. I’ll just remark that there’s a puzzling four-point star theme to the chair and a “delicately painted” Grecian urn that give Ben the opportunity to discuss a famous episode from the Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid, the Greek priestesses known as sibyls, and the god Apollo.

That’s all I’ll say. Not a word about that sliver of wood that provided the final bit of evidence.

Thanks for this one, Ben!

Click here to treat yourself to this wonderful article.

Technorati Tags: Antique, Antiques, Chair, Furniture, Mystery, Shop, Victorian