Heirlooms: Designing a Room for Heirlooms

We extensively renovated the middle section of our home in 2011 through 2013. Part of that project included modernizing a half bathroom, or powder room, near the family room and kitchen. About the time I was designing the room, Mom decided to sell their house. So I brought several much cherished items home with me, including a painting my very talented mother created, which hung for many years in the dining room of their home. I designed the powder room as a showcase for Mom's painting -- a room for heirlooms!

I actually designed this bathroom twice. The first time, a few years before the work actually started. I only got as far as a concept board, which illustrated my conceptual ideas, before losing interest or life got in the way. I can't really remember why the project never got off the ground.

Mood board with my original thoughts on designing the half bathroom;
personal collection

The wallpaper included maps of states. I still love it as it was so relevant for me. I LOVE maps and managed a team of research analysts who monitored the technology environment of state and local governments. But when I brought Mom's painting home I knew the design had to change.

Mom's painting was a copy of one her sister purchased when their family was stationed in Iran. Mom sure did love that painting. And so do I -- so much I designed a room around it. Different wallpaper, tile and granite were selected to match the colors of Mom's artwork.

Mom's painting prior to hanging; personal collection 

The room also includes two silhouettes of my husband's parents and of him as a little boy. I just love them. The one of his parents was done while on vacation at Disney Land; so you never know from where that future heirloom will come.

Silhouettes of members of the Dagutis family; personal collection

Jeanne Byran Insalaco, author of Everyone Has a Story, challenged fellow geneabloggers to write about their family heirlooms during the month of November.

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Heirlooms: Quilts and Embroidery 
Heirlooms: Tiffany? Chandelier
Heirlooms: The Olive Wood Bible 
An Homage to Mom
Memories Are My Favorite Heirlooms

Heirlooms: Quilts and Embroidery

My maternal grandmother was an excellent seamstress. She kept her nine children in homemade clothes through much of their time growing up. Many of her daughters' dresses were made from the lining of seed bags Grandpa bought to feed the chickens, cows, and pigs. I find it amazing the fine embroidery, cutwork, and smocking stitching she could do with such large, hardworking hands.

Wilhelmina (Schalin) Lange, Grandma Lange, in the living room of their
farmhouse doing what she loved best, fine embroidery. Personal collection

My mother began sewing when she was just a young slip of a girl and made her first dress when she was nine years old. She had tailor-quality sewing skills and could make bound button holes and all types of difficult pockets. My kindergarten teacher had spent the previous summer in Scotland and came home with several bolts of beautiful tweeds and heathered wool fabrics. One day she commented on my lovely dresses and dotted Swiss pinafores. I told her my Mother made all my clothes. (She sewed practically all summer for a new school year.) Mrs. Huth asked my mother to make her suits from the fabric she brought back from Scotland. Mom made three suits and said until the day she died that her tailoring got me through kindergarten!

Mom taught me how to embroider during the summer of 1965 when my cousin's family left for Iran and I was feeling very lonely without my best playmate, Joyce. I worked on a large cross-stitch piece that took all summer to finish. It was amazingly sloppy at the bottom, where I started, but by the end of the summer my stitching was almost as good as Mom's.

Mom's cutwork pillowcases, which she embroidered when she was 12
years old; personal collection

Though Mom made a baby quilt for me with appliqué and embroidery, she really didn't start quilting until much later in life. Dad's Mom lived next door and began quilting. Dad made her a quilting frame she kept in her screen porch/sunroom and Mom decided to re-teach herself how to quilt. It would a good way to visit with her mother-in-law and the frame Dad made would get more use.  Of course, she began with one of the most difficult patterns, Cathedral Windows.

Mom's Cathedral Window quilt, which I use from time to time in a guest
room with her cutwork pillowcases; personal collection

The second quilt I have is one Mom and I made. I did the cross-stitch panels of wild flowers and she did the quilt assembly and sewed the bed skirt in a coordinating fabric. This quilt was on my bed for much of my single life and then did duty in a guest bedroom in our two houses.

Our cross-stitch wildflower quilt in the guest room of the house in which
we lived from 1988-2004; personal collection

A guest bedroom in our current home right after we moved in 2004; personal
collection

All the furniture and the rug from this room were recently sold through Craig's List as we are getting ready to turn this room into a master bedroom walk-in closet. The quilt and bedskirt, however, have been saved. I'm hoping my nephew's wife will one day want them for my only (to date) grand niece when she is ready for a big girl bed. If she does not want the quilt, perhaps my youngest nephew and his wife will someday have a baby girl!

Jeanne Byran Insalaco, author of Everyone Has a Story, challenged fellow geneabloggers to write about their family heirlooms during the month of November.

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Heirlooms: Tiffany? Chandelier
Heirlooms: The Olive Wood Bible 
Memories Are My Favorite Heirlooms

Heirlooms: Tiffany? Chandelier

My middle brother and I liked to play in the corn crib on my maternal grandparents' farm. It's where Grandpa Lange stored the feed corn for his livestock. It had a wooden slide, which he used to unload the corn. As he shoveled corn through the door at the top of the slide, it would descend into the crib.
 I don't know why my brother and I didn't think about the mice or even rats that had to be gorging themselves on that corn. I guess we had great faith in the farm's mousers -- the cats that lived in the barn!

One time as my brother went down the slide, he landed on something barely buried in the corn. We dug around a bit and saw what we thought was gold. Buried treasure! We ran to get Mom and Dad and they unearthed a very filthy stained glass and brass chandelier. Mom fell in love immediately and we took it home with us that evening.

She worked on cleaning it up for months. It was obviously quite old, made before the use of electricity was common because the gold on which my brother landed was really one of several brass gas jets. After Mom got it in a spotless condition, Dad wired it for electricity and bought a bulb for the interior. He hung it over the dining room table in our house in Arlington, Virginia, where we lived from 1958 to 1967.

Thanksgiving or Christmas at Mom and Dad's home in Vienna. You can see the
chandelier above the table. (I am seated at the far left.); personal collection

When we moved to Vienna, Virginia, the chandelier came with us and again hung in the dining room. One night, as we ate dinner in the dining room -- something we rarely did -- there was a knock on the door. The man was a stranger, who introduced himself as an antiques dealer. He was driving through our neighborhood and was attracted by Mom's chandelier. He asked to examine it. He spent a couple of hours doing various things to it and then thanked my parents. He said he believed with a high degree of confidence it was made by Tiffany. I can't remember the date range he posited. He also suggested Mom and Dad have it formally appraised and insured separately. Oh my we all thought!

The appraiser Mom called who came to see it to said the same thing. However, the chandelier is not signed, which apparently is unusual.

When they moved to North Carolina, in 1978, the chandelier, of course, came, too. It hung over their dining room table in both houses they built there. In 2013 Mom and Dad decided to move into an assisted living facility, the chandelier came home with me. It now graces our dining room.

The maybe Tiffany chandelier in our current dining room; personal
collection

The chandelier and table set for dinner guests last week;
personal collection

Jeanne Byran Insalaco, author of Everyone Has a Story, challenged fellow geneabloggers to write about their family heirlooms during the month of November.

15 November 2015 Update: After publishing this post, I decided to make a new attempt at discovering who manufactured this chandelier. As I looked at online photographs, I suspected it was not a Tiffany. I found an antique dealer, who specialized in Tiffanies, and contacted him through his online forum. After completing a form and submitting photographs of my chandelier, Mr. Dennis Tesdell, a private broker of Tiffany lamps, replied. He confirmed it was not a genuine Tiffany and that it was made "in the style of Tiffany" between 1900-1930 out of slag glass, a type of glass Tiffany did not use. This, of course, reduces its value significantly, but that did not matter as I had no intention of selling it.

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Heirlooms: The Olive Wood Bible 
Memories Are My Favorite Heirlooms

Heirlooms: The Olive Wood Bible

My aunt and uncle, Marvin Edward Jennings, Jr., and Rachel Mildred "Millie" (Lange) Jennings, were stationed in Iran for two years In 1965 through 1967. Mom was one of nine children so I had a lot of aunts and uncles, but Uncle Marvin and Aunt Millie were like a second set of parents to me. Uncle Marvin is my Dad's brother and Aunt Mille was my Mom's sister. Yes, two sisters married two brothers. They almost always lived nearby, in the same town or next door to my parents. They were an important part of my youth and there for every important milestone in my life.

We lost Aunt Millie in October 2009 and my Mom in 2014. Those losses left a hole in my heart which only special memories fill today.

But back to Uncle Marvin and Aunt Mille's time in Iran. Aunt Millie found a bookbinder in Tehran that did exceptionally fine work for reasonable prices. Mom sent many books to Iran to be bound in leather and have the pages gold-leafed. But one book Aunt Mille gave my mother is very different. It is a New Testament bound in leather and olive wood. It occupies an honored place in our family room where I can see it whenever I sit in my favorite spot on the sofa. Just looking at it brings back so many wonderful memories of Aunt Millie.

Olive wood-bound New Testament from my aunt to my mother to me;
personal collection

Close-up of the olive wood-bound New Testament; personal collection

52 Ancestors #24: Memories Are My Favorite Heirlooms

Ancestor Name: Charles Theodore JENNINGS (1931- ) and Dorothy Ailein (LANGE) Jennings (1930-2014)

I've never been much of an heirloom keeper. I love beautiful things, don't get me wrong; but I like things to have a purpose or enrich my interior surroundings in some way. When my parents decided to move to an assisted living facility, they asked my brothers and me to sell their home. Mom was extremely practical and for years had been asking us to identify what we wanted. So when the time came, the few things each of us desired were easy to divide. But what my brothers and I treasure most are the memories.

Of weekend drives on the Skyline Drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

My middle brother, me and my Mom at an overlook somewhere along
the Skyline Drive

Of vacations visiting family.

Mom and my middle brother visiting my aunt and uncle in Florida

Of Easter Sundays paying our respects to our deceased grandparents.

My family (before our young brother was born) on
Easter Sunday visiting the graves of my maternal
grandparents at Trinity Memorial Cemetery in
Waldorf, Maryland

Easter Sunday visiting the grave of my paternal Grandfather at National
Memorial Park in Falls Church, Virginia

Of Christmas dinners.

Christmas dinner (the children's table); photograph taken at my parents'
home in North Carolina in 1983

Of family reunions.

Lange first cousins; photograph taken on Christmas Eve at the home of my
maternal grandparents

Lange family reunion; photograph taken at my parents home in 1970

Of our baby brother joining the family.

From left to right: my middle brother, me, my Mom, and our new brother

Of our parents unswerving love for each of us. Those memories are my most treasured heirlooms and will live in my heart forever.

This is my entry for Amy Johnson Crow's 52 ancestors in 52 weeks challenge optional theme Heirloom.

Fearless Females: Heirlooms

March is Women's History month and the Accidental Genealogist has 31 blogging prompts for the month to celebrate. I'm not sure I'll participate in every prompt but I will today. The prompt is: Describe an heirloom you may have inherited from a female ancestry. 

I am fortunate to have a few cherished heirlooms that I use as often as possible. If you spend the night at our home, you may sleep on pillowcases Grandma Lange embroidered and under a quilt my mother made.

Grandma Lange's embroidered cut-work pillowcases

I use these pillowcases on a bed with my Mom's cathedral quilt.

Mom's quilt

My most prized possession, however, is Grandma's engagement ring. I was only two years old when she died so it's doubtful any memory I may have of her is accurate. What I think I remember are her big, warm hands. Such a surprise to discover her engagement ring is a little small for me. I took it to be resized, but our jeweler said it was so delicate and so priceless, he didn't want to take the chance of damaging it. So I wear it on cold days when my hands are not the least bit swollen. It's still as beautiful as when I snuck into my parent's bedroom to pull it out of the jewelry box and try it on.

Grandma's engagement ring (I'll never be a hand model!)

I am named after my maternal grandmother, Wilhelmina Schalin, and honored to have her engagement ring.

Grandma Lange doing fine embroidery work