Found those Newsweek Lincoln Bedroom photos online and created an homage to them on the Lincoln Bedroom page. And wow, that room looks great. Check out the draperies and the Lincoln-era mantel.Not shown: a "You must be this tall to sleep in this bed" poster with a life-sized Abe. Not only tacky but not even historically accurate.
Those pics online are great. There are way more of them then were in the article.
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful are the photos of the Lincoln bedroom! To see a room truly done in the Victorian style, and in color, not only helps us understand the room in the Lincoln years (though it was not a bedroom) but also helps one visualize all of the black and white Victorian photos into color. One gets a taste of the splendor of the "Prince of Wales" room as it was when Mary Lincoln redecorated it and when poor Willie Lincoln died in that bed. All of those Victorian photos would be so much better in color and give us a real taste of the Victorian elegance of the White House. Not that I'm particularly fond of Victorian, but the Victorian period is so much a part of White House history.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks to the photographer for using a wide-angle.
ReplyDeleteThis room just looks better and better the more I look at it. A job really, really well done! Mr. Allman, we're proud of you!
ReplyDeleteMy friend (also) John, who is a very knowledgable dealer in American antiques, tells me that the wooden canopy hanging above the Lincoln Bed would probably be rightly be called a "tester" - just like an attached tester on a massive Victorian bed. He seemed to think that it is rather "late" for that type of thing, as it was more often seen during the Empire period as a totally seperate element from the bed - like examples at Winterthur.
Still don't know if this and the window cornices are "period" - from White House storage - or very careful reproductions.
Ooooooh! Get to go to a Big Mardi Gras Ball tomorrow night, so I'm finally getting into the spirit of the season. Still, I'll be so glad when the Holidays are finally over - and Hurricane season can start (gulp...)
I think now that the new Lincoln Bedroom and the Lincoln Sitting Room (redone during the Clinton era in the Victorian style) go together much better than before. Before, I thought the Lincoln Sitting Room looked out of place and overdone. However, now that the LB has been redone, I like it much better. Now, on to redoing the Blue Room... (I WISH)
ReplyDeleteOh! Sorry! According to the "Washington Post" article that Derek quoted from and posted on the Lincoln Bedroom page of this website, the canopy/tester/whatever and the window cornice were all made new for the new, improved Lincoln bedroom.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder why they went to the expense of having a new mantle made when there are so many virtually identical to it available at architectural salvage supply places around the country. But I'm sure there are issues at work that I don't know about - like size - the new mantle had to fit exactly a pre-existing condition, etc. Or perhaps they were replicating one in an old photograph of the room, or something. At any rate, they did a fine job!
The mantles in my old apartment here in New Orleans are very similar to the new one in the Lincoln Bedroom, but the marble is slightly darker and the details are a bit simpler.
i would like to know what company or individual created the cornices with the shield? The originals were taken down and lost in the 1930s and I would like to have a set made for my LIncoln LIbrary? please respond to plummer50@fuse.net
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