Each Piece of a Home’s Decor Can Serve as a Memory Bank
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By Bill Primavera
My older sister Marian and I were so different in our preferences in life, it’s amazing that we came from the same family.
I had deep sentiment about the places where we had lived and always enjoyed visiting my old neighborhoods. I also liked collecting antiques. My sister was a strictly modern girl who always sought the new in her possessions and living environments and never cared to look back.
After I moved away from home and established my own household and family, I was very proud of the furnishings and art I had collected to make a comfortable environment that I felt expressed who my wife and I were. I was educated at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., where I was greatly influenced in my taste by period décor, and worked to convince my wife that we should surround ourselves with old things with a history. And I succeeded with my wife’s foray into antiques that quickly exceeded mine.
I was very proud to invite my sister to our first home, which was furnished with reproductions from colonial Williamsburg that we purchased at the wonderful B. Altman. The store had an entire department dedicated to reproductions from that historic site. When my sister visited my home for the first time, imagine my surprise when she exclaimed, “I couldn’t live here!” Actually, I was insulted but I assumed that she meant that everything was too formal for her liking.
My sister had a use-it-then-forget-it attitude, discarding furniture when the upholstery started to wear, rather than replacing it. I have always held on to everything I collected, but upgraded it with refinishing or reupholstering when needed.
As I write this, I am sitting in my office which looks out into my great room that features a Chippendale-style settee that has been recovered not once, but twice in its 50-some-odd-year history. As I look at it, I don’t see just a piece of furniture, but rather the day I purchased it as a bachelor furnishing his first apartment in Brooklyn Heights, my original neighborhood when I moved to the Big Apple directly from college.
I see more than that, actually. There was a young woman who worked at the same publishing house that I did. I would pass her desk each morning on the way to the coffee cart and would exchange pleasantries with her as I did. We became friends and I invited her to come with me when I set out to make my purchase. Little did either of us know that, together as man and wife, we would be sitting on that settee for all the years that have followed. That’s what I see when I look at it.
Also in my living room is an antique corner chair. There is a photo taken when my daughter was less than two years old with her sitting on my lap in that chair. Every time I look at it, I see my young daughter.
These cherished memories are part and parcel of the furnishings that over the years become more than just practical pieces of furniture. Memories become imprinted on the things we surround ourselves with and contribute to our joy of living in the settings we create.
Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc. (www.PrimaveraPR.com). To engage the services of The Home Guru to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.
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