the 'bastard'

Please click on the images to see the details better.

This old 7-foot cabinet stands in our family room. It was named "the Bastard" affectionately by a local antique dealer because of how it combines several furniture styles: bits of Empire, Rococo, Neoclassical, etc, and the extra wooden base added at the bottom for height.

My mom's mom, Grandma Olive, made a living as an artist~illustrator~designer as a single mom in the 1920s and -30s when she and my grandfather were divorced. My mom was just 6 then, in 1924. I think I met Grandma Olive at least once (she lived several states away), but she died in1960 when I was 4; I have no memories of her. I wish I could ask her about many things, including this cabinet, which belonged to her.

Grandma Olive painted the Romanesque scene on the door of the cabinet, above. Here's a detail, below.



Mom told me that Grandma Olive was always picking up stray pieces of furniture at a bargain on the back streets of NYC (they lived across the bay in Bayonne, New Jersey), then taking them home to rejuvenate with her artistic imagination.

When I got this cabinet after my parents died, it was hard for me to put anything on the shelves besides "pretty" things - like the vases on top. But something in me rebelled against pretty decorating for the sake of form and not function, so now I keep my oversized books and some of our CDs there. Since I think books are beautiful, and piles of books even more so, I am okay with my own "bastardization" of this old treasure.

I dream of someday writing a book about four women: Grandma Olive, my mom, me, and my daughter Lesley. In it I would have to "create" Olive, since all I have are some things she touched, created, repaired, loved, and a few words about her from my mom and dad, and my older siblings. Although Olive had, and created, many beautiful things, I've read a couple of her letters that show material things weren't all to her. She had a big heart, but didn't always know how to share it.