Two great Victorian architects unite

Posted on | August 20, 2012 | No Comments

Just a “teaser” post to give you a sneak peek at the Bruce J. Talbert room set available in a couple of weeks…

But FIRST, our “inaugural” room was recently hung in Alameda in a historic Queen Anne home designed by the prolific American architect George F. Barber.

Barber was enormously successful in marketing his work by mail order, offering designs for houses, barns, store fronts, churches and pavilions.  His real success in this was his willingness to alter any of his designs to the customer’s specific needs or desires, encouraging them to write his firm for any changes as much as they wished, adding that they “were not easily offended”.  His tailored approach to architecture lead to thousands of satisfied customers, and dozens of variations of the same designs, which has made identifying actual Barber designs by historians today a little more challenging.  A quick web search though turned up several versions of this same design, (#27 in Barber’s Cottage Souvenir), from points all around the country.  Among the things in common to all these examples is the charming dual-approach onto the front porch and the port-holed turrets.

 

 

So we’re very happy to have found such a fine historic home to hang our new suite of wallpapers designed by yet another talented and innovative Victorian architect, one from the “other side of the pond”, Bruce J. Talbert.  So below is the promised peek at the ceiling of our new Talbert set, a portion of the room set that was NOT on display earlier this year at the San Francisco Legion of Honor, (if you got to see it there at the Cult of Beauty exhibit).

So what’s up there??  You’re seeing the Flora Ceiling Paper surrounded by the Flora Ceiling Border, with a Flora Corner Block laid between the angled turns.  If you look carefully you can see that the lead paper hanger responsible for this beautiful installation, Heidi Wright Mead, expertly “wove” the branches of the vine in the border to disguise the miters there, (wow!).  The Clematis Frieze can also be seen here on the wall just below the plaster cornice in this picture.

And lastly a shot from our photo shoot a week ago, (with camera equipment in the foreground)!

So there you go!  Two great architects in one historic setting.

Category: Events, Victorian
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