My 12 Pane Frame
Since I wrote about our Duke of Marlborough desk and the seats/tables that fit under it in the previous post, I thought I’d complete the tell-all and talk about the piece that hangs on the wall above it.
It’s another oldie - both in its original purpose as a window in someone’s house and in its after-life as a picture frame in my house.
When the Duke desk came to live with us, it was clear that the spot above it needed something … ‘royal’ shall we say? I know this window-turned-frame idea has come and gone in popularity since, but it was ‘new’ back then. In fact, and I could be wrong about this, but I think I thought of it myself as a substitute for buying either a giant frame or lots of smaller ones.
So I went to a place called Kohler’s Trading Post. If you happen to be from Lombard, a suburb of Chicago, or basically anywhere in Chicagoland and are “of a certain age” you may be sighing right now. Kohler’s was a salvage place - when salvage was useful and interesting but way before it was trendy. You probably noticed that I said “was” and that’s where the sighing part comes in because most of Kohler’s went up in flames in 1999 and there wasn’t enough left for the business to remain viable. A prophet before its time, you might say.
Anyway, for $15 I bought a 12 lite window that had been baking in the sun and bathing in the rain for who knows how long. My husband trimmed off the bottom rail so that the four edges would be even and I employed a technique that was popular at the time - crackle painting. It was already kind of crackled from the elements so I had a head start. Turned out great.
Now what to fill it with? The natural lead-in was things that come in a dozen. A browse through the clearance section at a local book store brought me to a book about floral designs through the year. It had lovely photos of different arrangements featuring flowers that were typical of each month of the year. Okay, there was my twelve.
I bought the book, chose my three favorite photos for each of the four seasons, and cut them out. Lilacs, roses, calla lilies, evergreens and more. The pictures were smaller than the panes so they needed matting. The openings aren’t standard mat sizes and I didn’t want to have custom ones made so instead I bought a package of paper in shades of brown to cut for inside mats, and some sheets of handmade paper that had flower petals embedded in it as the outside mat. I needed the shades of brown because some of the photos have lighter backgrounds and some have darker ones so one color would not fit all. The outer mat supplied the cohesion.
I like that my window frame has an overall loveliness, and then up close you can see the seasons represented and its charm is multiplied. I originally thought I’d use the window as a sort of canvas and change out the pictures every so often, but unlike the fleeting beauty of cut flowers, my window pane arrangements remain fresh.
I found a great new salvage yard near me recently called Reuse Depot that describes themselves as a “reclaimed building materials and architectural salvage warehouse” where I bought a piece of old coving that I’m planning on creating a shelf with, and I’ve even have had two meet-ups there with friends that also like looking at interesting old stuff. It’s not as big as I remember Kohler’s being, but it’s very neatly organized and has tons of things - shutters, doors, railings, cabinets, door knobs, light fixtures, on and on, including windows of all sizes. There’s probably a place like that near you. If you want a virtual trip, check out the TV show Salvage Dawgs - it’s definitely binge worthy.
Pretty much anything that you can put in a regular frame can go in a window, and they come in all sizes and shapes. Consider creating a new view at your house.
