Fabulous Syracuse

The weather is GORGEOUS! However, I'm not home to enjoy it - I'm away in Syracuse for a meeting. Luckily I'll be home tonight so we can possibly finish the deck tomorrow, and Ken is dutifully grouting the hearth as we anticipate getting the stove - well, sometime. And we have to be ready for it - the shop is so overbooked that they want the stove to get installed the minute they receive it! So good to be prepared - I don't think they want to wait around for grout to dry.

Anyways, the Syracuse area is chock-full of Craftsman and Bungalow-type amusements. Sadly, I didn't bother with a rental car, so I can only dream, but I did manage to take a cab over to Dalton's antiques right in town here - it was mission oak mecca! There was a narrow Gus Stickley drop front desk-bookshelf, loads of settles, Morris chairs, and Eastwoods that made me swoon, and all manner of antique pottery, lighting, table runners - plus a few new items like the wonderful table runner and pillow kits like some of these - sadly none fit on our dining room buffet, thanks to Ken for taking my kooky phone call asking him to quick! measure the buffet!

They also had some great fabric swatches - both from Archive Editions (we love their Hoffman!) and other companies - I picked a Hoffman-style print that they're checking on for me - it had too much blue in it for us! For that $16 rocker we got at the yard sale - the seat needs to be re-covered.

The owner is David Rudd, who writes the column in American Bungalow - "Perspective on Antiques" - where you can ask all sorts of questions about your vintage finds. I didn't realize that was who he was till I picked up a card - then I remembered his photo in the magazine and recognized the name. How cool - I got to chat with a real mission oak guru about a couple of chairs I found, and began to see if I could figure out if the seats are original. He suggested I send in photos - so I'll do that and maybe it'll appear in a future issue of AB. We also had a discussion about how collecting chairs is just so addictive. It's definitely my problem. I mean, how many people need to sit in our house at a time? Pretty soon we'll have seating for a hundred.

He also pointed out some Syracuse landmarks - where Stickley's house was in Syracuse, his route through town to go to his factory, etc. WOW - totally cool. The store was awesome, if I didn't mention it. There were some chairs in there that I'd be hard-pressed to lift up - even with my improved landscaping biceps - they were such heavy looking oak. You could just FEEL the craftsmanship everywhere. Awesome. And they had really great Dard Hunter Rose tissue paper and wrapping paper! I got a set of stationery that was really nice - perhaps for correspondence on my future Bangor Bungalows book (next summer's project).