Bama Planter

Having taught school for so long, I am hard pressed to express my happiness in finding this one and bringing it home.  It's heavy, and is larger than it looks in the picture.  Here's how I came to get it. Nita and I rode to a storage room in McCalla where a guy was selling furniture he and his wife had collected for fifty years.  The desk was right by the door, and it was the first thing I saw that I knew was good . Turned legs, original hinges, that pumpkin-orange color, no major repairs or replacement parts, and a brown interior that only age could create. When I saw the prices, my heart sank a bit, but I remained calm as usual and showed no emotion. The man had everything priced sky high, and I knew we could buy little to nothing. I did a quick walk through while he and Nita talked about his terms and prices. He had told her the night before that she could take anything she wanted on consignment, but now he had changed his mind and wanted only to sell f...

I have a tendency to line up furniture like some sort of store, and I'm trying to do better, but old habits are hard to break.  I get the "Your house looks like an antique shop " comment a lot ( which I secretly like to hear), so I'm already prepared to point out sarcastically that there are no price tags on anything, but they are " free to make an offer on anything you see ." I spent the day working outside and inside the place, as this is the first official day of my summer vacation from school.  I already miss my ninth graders. Several are in summer school, but not because of me ( Thankfully, everybody passed in my room). This corner of the old house shows, starting from the left, a federal chest under the window which I found at a mall on Hwy. 280. By the chair is a Colonial New England 2 drawer blanket chest in original red paint with thumb moulding and flint glass pulls on turned Federal feet, a chest from Virginia in the corner which I...

I am all excited about an Alabama portrait that has finally come home. This painting is of Felix Taylor Taliaferro, a cotton merchant who lived in Mobile, Alabama, in the 1860s and 1870s. I bought this portrait from a family member who lives in Pennsylvania. They were unsure if he was a grandfather on up their line or an uncle.  In either case, they wanted to sell it, having no interest in family history. I was glad to buy it so that his portrait could come back South again. The subject of the painting was a citizen of Orange County, Virginia.  According to family, he moved to Mobile to make his fortune in the cotton trade. Some years later, before 1880,  he returned to Virginia. Although the name is spelled "Taliaferro" it is apparently pronounced more like " Tolliver." Mr. Taliaferro's middle name Taylor is the maiden name of his grandmother, who was a second or third cousin to President Zachary Taylor. Felix Taylor Taliaferro's parents we...