hooker dining room furniture

hello everyone, welcome back to glanmore nationalhistoric site. my name is melissa and i'm sara. we are going to be giving you a behindthe scenes tour of the dining room in our historic house, glanmore national historicsite. it is something we don't normally do is go past the ropes. so we are actually goingto take the ropes down. i've got the ropes unhooked and we will move that aside. so asa visitor you wouldn't get to do this and even as a staff person here at glanmore iwould be very reluctant to go beyond the ropes unless i really had to. mostly because i'ma bit of a klutz and i don't want to break anything so that is my reasoning for that.the less i go back there the better. today we are going to go back and have a look. weare actually going to start just up beside

me here. this is a portrait of mrs. phillipswho was glanmore's original resident. she and her husband john phillips built glanmorein 1883 and the house stayed within the family until 1971 when it was purchased to becomea museum. so we are in their dining room and come over here and have a look at mr. phillipsportrait. do we know who painted them? yes, as a matter of fact they were painted in the1850s so long before this house was built and it was painted by w.l. judson. he wasa noted portrait artist based out of london, ontario. mr. phillips was from london originally.but, w.l. judson actually quit portrait artistry and became enamoured with the cowboy lifestyle.which i find really funny. he ended up moving to california and painting lots of desertscenes in california and new mexico all sorts

of desert scenes. if you go there you canfind judson art galleries that are all his cowboy scenes. it is pretty funny. so thereis mr. phillips there and then just beside him is a portrait, it is a little bit dark,but you might be able to make out jessie, who was mr. and mrs. phillips adopted daughter.this one is actually a photograph that mrs. phillips painted over top of. so she tookthe photograph of jessie and then painted in detail on it which is quite interesting.interesting. that is really large for a photograph at that time isn't it? ya, well it is printedon canvas pretty special, but they did do that quite a bit they did sometimes charcoalenhancements on photographs. we have some others in the museum collection that are likethat as well. so we are going to have a look

over here at the cabinet just here. i'm actuallygoing to open it up. just so we can see. if i can get it open. rona probably will tellme that i should have been wearing my gloves. sorry, rona. so these are all the originalleaves to the table. there are ten leaves and they are stored in this cabinet whichi think is quite ingenious because anybody that has a table with leaves you always wonderwhere am i going to put them. when you have only one or two it is not so bad you can slipthem in a closet or underneath a sofa but when you have ten it presents a storage challenge.so they have this lovely cabinet. the table is original to the house as well. and thesideboard, the massive sideboard is original to the house. i'm just wondering how manyguests you could get here with ten leaves

in this table. even though it is a big roomit seems like it probably might not have fit. yeah, well, the rule of thumb is usually twopersons, two people per leaf. so we estimate probably twenty people around the table. ithink there are two leaves, maybe even three in the table right now. i'm not entirely sure.but we have fourteen of chairs, the original chairs that match the table too. so it ishard for us to know where there more chairs originally. certainly when it was set up withall the leaves in the table it would just fill the entire room. these are the originalchairs? these are the original chairs. they've got some beautiful details on them. they'vegot leather seats. yeah, so we will have a little look maybe at some of the interestingobjects on the dining room table. i think

first we will have a look at the dishes. theyare quite beautiful and each table setting, each place setting has different patternson it so you might want to show a few, sara. oh o.k. with he camera. these dishes are notoriginal to the house but they belonged to sir mackenzie bowell. sir mackenzie bowellwas canada's fifth prime minister, from belleville, and he most definitely would have been, wouldhave known the phillips family that lived here at glanmore and would have been theircontemporary. he probably came here for dinners but these are his dishes that belonged tohim and were passed down through his family and they were a gift to him from queen victoria.so that is pretty neat. if you look closely you will see its got his family crest righton the top of the plate, the bowell family

crest. those were given to him in 1896. thatis part of our regional collection which is the items that we collect that have to dowith local history. so there is other interesting objects on the table as well. i really lovethe cruet set, it is one of my favourite objects on the table. it has got all these lovelylittle crystal jars and silver the crystal jars which are for mayonnaise or mustard,salad dressings, different vinaigrette that sort of thing. it would add a very eleganttouch to your table. it is kind of interesting and also the salt cellar which is just besidethe cruet set. with the two little spoons that are crossed over. so the salt cellarwould have been used for serving salt at your dinner table. salt was a commodity, much morevaluable than it is considered today than

back in the victorian times. and so you wouldhave served your salt in a dish that you could then take a small spoonful and sprinkle itand that would control how much salt you were using much better than a shaker which is whatwe are accustomed to using today. would everybody have one? i'm noticing there is one. thereare four on this table so they would have gone every couple of people and they couldshare the salt cellars. yeah, and so if you imagine, if you think of yourself, if youare sprinkling the salt on something and the table gets all little granules of salt itis very wasteful. so this is actually a bit more of a controlled way to have your salt.pass the salt was a dangerous game. yeah well you didn't want to be wasteful, that is forsure. absolutely. so maybe we will have a

little look around the room and notice thecolours on the walls and the woodwork as we go along. it has all be restored. so a conservatorhas come and gone down with a scalpel and a microscope to go look for the lowest layerof paint. so that we can put those colours back to their original colours on the wallsand the woodwork. we were quite surprised to find three colours on the doors. that wasthe original placement of colours on the woodwork which is quite interesting. i don't even imaginehaving the time or the patience to paint three tones on woodwork today you know we just wantto get the paint slapped on there and get it done, but historically in the victorianera they definitely would have done that. that is repeated throughout the historic house.there are several different arrangements of

colours on the woodwork. yeah, so if you didn'tnotice the imari charger over here. it is very interesting. it is from the 1700s andit is from our couldery collection and it was just recently featured as one of our staffpicks and so if you go onto our youtube channel for glanmore national historic site you'llbe able to see a little video all about this imari charger. we also have a post on theblog about it as well. oh excellent. so that is at glanmore.ca and so you can learn moreabout this imari charger but it is quite beautiful, it dates to the early 1700s and its been recentlyconserved. it had a big crack in it that was fixed with staples which you will see picturesof if you go onto our blog. the table over here is really interesting too. its from thecouldery collection and its called a forcing

table. so imagine if you will that there is,you had room in your house for a like a giant planter which is essentially what this is.it has a false top and inside its lined with lead so you could put soil in and you couldforce spring bulbs,m which must have been just very elegant to have a big table fullof spring bulbs. yes, it is very beautiful, even closed. yeah, absolutely. and this isactually a vase on top of it which is also quite spectacular. it is one of, well i oftensay this, it is one of my favourite things in the museum, but everytime i give a touri say this is my favourite thing and i pick different things all the time. i guess i likeeverything! i've had a different favourite thing every day that i have been here, so.absolutely. absolutely. so i don't know if

we got a look at what is one the fireplace,on the mantel here. the mantel is also original and all the fireplace mantels throughout thehouse are original. these two little statues i believe are from the glanmore or phillips-faulknercollection as well. they are charming little figures. and then in the centre it is quitefascinating. it is a feather work display so this glass domed display has flowers thathave all been made out of bird feathers. it was a very common item in a victorian householdthey would have a wreath made out of feathers or floral arrangements made out of feathers,or hair, seeds, sometimes wool. they would have these fascinating little fussy, busylittle things in their households. so that is from i think it is from our regional collection,no it might be couldery actually. have a look

at the beautiful tile work around the fireplace.that is something you really can't see or appreciate from the far side of the diningroom. or when you are here visiting. they are quite lovely. i don't think they are originalto the fireplace, originally there would have been different tiles there and there is abit of record of them being replaced at some point but they are still quite beautiful.so did you um, is there anything else you wanted to ask about sara since you are theperson who is really kind of visiting us here. i am, well i think we should take a quickpeak at these tiles over here on the sideboard. oh yeah, they are so cool. you can't reallysee them when the ropes are up, well a little on the other side. yeah, absolutely. theseones are scenes from british history and they

are oh i was trying to remember what manufacturerwas, they are minton, that just came to me. so that one is the magna carta, it does actuallysay right on them but they are quite beautiful. so there are four of those on the sideboardand there are four of them on the fireplace mantel too, way down low and way up high aredifferent scenes for shakespearean history or shakespearean plays rather. you can kindof see it right up there. i don't know which ones they are either and to get down to seethem i'd be on the floor. well you are better than me, i won't be bending down to get that.interesting, very cool. come back and have a look at the sideboard and i'll tell youa few things and we will see a few things. these little statues are quite interestingtoo. it is called parian ware and so parian

ware is like a white unglazed porcelain andits supposed to be or look like marble. so that is why they often show as statues. thatsort of thing. and there are more over on the other side. now i've seen this clock before.hmmm. yeah i don't know too much about it actually but its so beautiful and its oneof the photos we just selected to feature on our brand new glanmore brochure or rackcard. yes. yeah. which you helped design. i did! that is why it looks so familiar, sara!everybody stop in for a rack card. yeah, we've got brand new ones that sara designed whileshe was here. these little guys on the sideboard are really really cool too. and you can whenyour visiting they just kind of fade into the sideboard you really can't see them butthey are called epergnes and it is spelled

e-p-e-r-g-n-e, epergne and the epergne issort of like a fluted vase sometimes they have little baskets or containers on themas well. they are blown glass, venetian glass and because they are so fragile with thisdelicate glass they often break so they are pretty cool if you ever see them in an antiquestore they are pretty rare finds. and they would have used them for vases for littleflowers, arrangements etc. pretty cool. yeah. so i'm not sure if we have run out of timesara? yeah, i think it is time probably to wrap up. alright. you can tell people aboutmore of the mysteries around here the next time. just say goodbye. so goodbye everyone,before we go i just want to say a big thanks to sara, who has been here for the past monthdoing some work on our social media and so

if you've seen one of our videos or watchedour periscope tour either live on a replay its all because of this girl here. oh yeah.she's been fantastic so thanks very much sara. thank you. alright bye everyone. bye!