I’m really happy with the way our office turned out. It’s kind of a catch-all, but I think all the elements work together and it gives me the opportunity to show off a lot of things that didn’t fit in elsewhere in our home.
I’ve had this vintage metal sign in every one of my post-college apartments, so I was glad to finally display it in our house. Like many of my “antiques,” I got it from my grandpa, but I’m not sure how he came about it.
The plank above the desk looks to be part of an old shipping crate. It was originally a shelf in our bedroom closet, and when we ripped out the existing rod and shelves to install a closet system, I discovered the address written on the underside. No date on it, though. I love the thick painted handwriting and the peeled off label.
These next two items are mixed-media paintings that I did five or six years ago. I don’t do much painting (for art’s sake) anymore, but I’d like to get back to it sometime.
This is a portrait of my parent’s yellow lab, Haley (next to some old letterpress blocks).
And this one is Nixon, of course. For a while, I was fascinated with the idea of preserving personal memories in paintings, though I don’t think many of those ideas came to frution. But this is one that did. When I was little, my grandpa used to have a poster of Nixon in his basement, his teeth looking like a hockey player, blacked out with electrical tape.
I don’t know if this is true, but it’s what my grandpa told me. His parents lost a lot in the Depression, so the phrase was surely more descriptive of that than of Nixon, but I paired the two ideas anyway.
The Siamese cat light on the desk is a vintage 1950s TV lamp. Early televisions were very dim, requiring all the room lights to be turned off. Enter the TV lamp as a way to bring in some ambient low light to an otherwise dark room. Very kitschy.
This mailbox was on the front of our house when we bought it, but we replaced it with something bigger that could hold magazines and packages. I saved it because I like the envelope shape and thought it could be a cute place to stash stuff.
