From the Attic of an Opera House to the Kitchen Table
A friend found numerous old day books and scraps of wallpaper in the attic of her restaurant, which used to be an opera house. Most of it was thrown away, but she saved some of it for me.
The day books are from the 1920s. I don’t think they’re from the opera house because the entries list flat iron, gas, oil, nails, and other goods found in a hardware store — unless it was a hardware store by day and an opera house by night. They might be from the hardware store across the street.
Whenever I look at something old with handwriting in it I’m always amazed by the beautiful penmanship. It seems like everyone had good penmanship up until a few decades ago. Maybe a lot of people still do, I just don’t see it because everything is typed. Then again, I see a lot of handwriting at work when someone makes text corrections and the majority write barely legible squiggles.
Inside one of the books, posters were used to separate the years.
The wallpaper is so old and brittle it falls apart when someone thinks about touching it. I don’t have enough to cover my walls, but I’m sure I can find other things to cover. It’s hard to tell in the photos, most of it is in relief.
1 Comment
jess said 102 days ago:
Wow what a score! You should scan some, i’d use em. Sweet damask!
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