History of My Bibliotheque

The “story” of an object is the history or provenance. This can be the history of the object as owned by you, or in the case of a vintage or antique piece, you may be able to learn about past ownership and placement. You may remember me writing about the book Objects of Desire: The Lives of Antiques and Those Who Pursue Them written by Thatcher Freund. The story of the unembellished blue blanket chest and those who cherished it is unforgettable.

Thomas O’Brien (American Modern, Abrams Books) writes about purchasing three Chippendale style chairs with “…worn green velvet seats and a bunch of fretwork fragments saved in a box like pieces of a puzzle.” He kept two of them in his shop in New York and one at home. When he moved to a modern apartment he had the chairs restored and the seats covered in artist’s linen. The chairs are breathtaking in his space. Their emotional impact on him is evident as he concludes, “It is worth keeping the imperfect pieces that you just instinctively love, to be saved for later or lived with in the meantime in all their charming ruin.”

Spanish designer, Isabel Lopez-Quesada (Isabel Lopez-Quesada At Home, Vendome, photographs by Miguel Flores-Vianna) created a dressing room for herself around her grandmother’s voluminous glass front wardrobe.

Magazine editor and fabric designer Carolina Irving’s home reflects her appreciation of nature. Here is a photo of a large botanical triptych created by a friend’s gardener. Next to it are two pieces of coral, each hanging on a thin black ribbon from a decorative brass hook. (Haute Bohemians by Miguel Flores-Vianna)

The bibliotheque has a long history in our home. We ordered it from Henkel-Harris in Winchester, Virginia and waited for months for it to be made. It was originally meant to be used as a china cabinet in a dining room. The top drawer is felt lined for silver flatware. At the time, we had a separate room for the dining room and this piece as well as a long table and 6 upholstered chairs waited here to be enjoyed. It was a busy time in our life with school and work, and we usually ate dinner sitting in wing chairs at an old library table in the tiny kitchen. The china cabinet was filled with pretty dishes we never used and when I expressed concern that we did not eat in the dining room my husband told me he simply liked looking in there as he passed by. Good answer, but the thought of having something we didn’t use worried me. This photo is a close up of the escutcheon on the top drawer and the scar on the cabinet made when a heavy platter not placed properly took a dive and hit the front. This, we decided, added to the provenance of the piece. Repairing it might have been possible, but we chose to live with it and continued to love it.

Later, when we moved to a downtown loft in an early twentieth century bank building the china cabinet became a bibliotheque, centered on one wall at the head of a single long rectangular room in the space we subdivided with a wooden painted screen and designated as the living room. We filled it with books and seashells and kept it lit up. To me, the bibliotheque was a point of interest and something to be seen from almost any place in the loft. It began to take on a personality of sorts as our own cabinet of curiosities.

When we moved here to the Texas Hill Country we created a room adjoining ours to be the library. We had fallen in love over our mutual passion for books and it seemed right we should be close to our books. In fact, they are all over the house as you will read in another post on book stylists! The bibliotheque is centered on one wall and is just a bit taller than the mahogany bookcases purchased at the same time. They have never been together, the four cases and the bibliotheque and it is quite an uplifting and cozy experience to be in here surrounded by books and inherited family serving pieces.

It is most pleasant to work in the library by daylight and/or lamplight. However, it seemed to me the mahogany back on the upper glass fronted part of the bibliotheque and the deep red colored books inside all blended together. There are several entries in my journal where I thought on paper about possibilities for lightenng the interior of the bibliotheque. In Scandinavian countries where they want to preserve as much light as possible, they use light colored furniture, wall paint, and mirrors effectively. Wanting to leave the inside as is, I decided to create my own wallpaper backing. Considering several schemes, it seemed best to keep the “wallpaper” simple and tie in with something else in the room.

Our desk in the library is made of an antique piece of Napoleon Gray marble from the repurposed 1905 bank building where we lived in Houston. When we were given the piece of marble we had it cleaned and honed at the nearby Sweeney Marble. It wasn’t until many years later we learned the history of this marble. The quarry was discovered in 1884 when blasting for a railroad line. The quarry site is in Missouri near the town of Phenix and was originally named the Phenix Stone and Lime Company. The company was renamed in 1905 when W. J. Grant bought into the business and they began to specialize in the fine veined gray marble they called Napoleon Gray. This marble is found on the walls of the New York Stock Exchange and numerous bank buildings around the country. 

Designer Steven Gambrel used it in the kitchen of an historical home he remodeled in Sag Harbor, New York.

A sketch in my journal helped me make remember the sizes of paper needed for each section.

As you might imagine, there was some preparatory work to be done before my first foray into marbelizing paper. On a sample of the heavy grade roll paper pre-cut to fit each section of the bibliotheque I tested the color and type of stroke needed. The color is custom mixed; one cup of Sherwin Williams Oyster White with 5 teaspoons of Sherwin Williams Tobacco. This color was lightened by mixing it with one-third water. The India ink was diluted in a mix of 1/3 ink to 2/3 water. The marks were made using a pen made of cut bamboo. Working quickly; painting a section, sponging it to soften it and add some speckled highlights, waiting for the base coat to dry, and then using photographs of the marble table-top as a reference, making veining marks with India ink.

Now, the bibliotheque is even more personal, radiating a new lightness and creating a visual flow from the table in the center of the library to the long wall as you look into the room or sit at the table working.  The result is surprising and gives me much joy…a new look for an old friend!