POSTING #138

Looking for a Welsh Dresser 

It was a Saturday morning in 1962.

 I was working at the  time in the Canadian Immigration office in Leeds, Yorkshire, and Pat and I were living in a small but delicious Georgian cottage on the Stray in Harrogate.

Pat was pregnant and I was just in the process of bringing her breakfast in bed (a real English breakfast with rashers of bacon, eggs, grilled tomato and fried bread---thick slices of bread fried in the fat from the bacon, cholesterol hadn't been discovered yet!) and marmalade, when the phone rang.

A man said, "We have your dresser, when can we deliver it."

"Who are you, and what dresser?"

"We're removers (British for 'moving company'), and the dresser is the one you saw in Ripon. Mr. Bell wants you to have it. We're in Harrogate and we can be at your house in half an hour."

We were confused, and since you are also likely to be confused, I'd better go back a bit.

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Our rented Harrogate house was furnished but we thought it might be good to start acquiring a few, small antiques for the home we eventually wanted to have in Ottawa.

Pat had been going to antique auctions in Harrogate and thought that perhaps an18th century Welsh dresser might be something to look for. Here is a Welsh dresser currently available in England (for about 3000 British pounds) that is the type of piece we were looking for---a small dresser, with a rack above for displaying plates.

 We placed an advertisement in a chain of Yorkshire weekly newspapers, asking for an antique Welsh dresser. The initial response was disappointing, mainly crude, heavy dining room furniture from the 1930s.

Then a letter came from a Mr. Bell in Ripon. He said that he was moving to London and had a dresser to sell. It wasn't really a Welsh dresser, he said, but it did have some carved dragons, and he reminded us the dragon had been a symbol of Wales for centuries. He invited us to view it.

Intrigued, we drove across the moors to Ripon---to be precise we drove on a road that cuts through the moors.

Mr. Bell's house turned out to be a huge, stone country house with a circular drive and a portico under which we parked our tiny, navy Anglia.

Mr. Bell was an affable Yorkshire country gentleman, tweeds and all, somewhere in his 60s. It was obvious that he was in the process of moving, there was little furniture in the large foyer. He guided us to a door off the hall and told us to look into the room. The room was empty except  for an elaborate piece of furniture against the far wall. That was the dresser he had mentioned.

Our mouths dropped open, and we stared at it. It wasn't the simple, restrained Georgian dresser we were looking for. It was a large, boisterous, confident Victorian piece that proclaimed that 'Britain Rules the Waves' and you better not forget it.

We went in and studied the dresser. Every surface had a design. The top of the dresser was made of pollarded oak with an amazing grain that shone through carefully applied layers of French polish. Everywhere else, there were elaborate hand carved images, including lots of dragons. 

We stepped back and looked at each other. It certainly wasn't a small, restrained, elegant Welsh dresser. It was huge (6' 9" high and  6' 6" wide) and enthusiastic.

We had never seen anything like it. The design and workmanship were unbelievably good.

Here is the sideboard in our house in Virgil, as seen from just inside the front door. The sideboard is the first thing guests see. 

But it was so very Victorian, and our hearts at that time were more in tune with Georgian furniture, silver and china.

Mr. Bell said that the dresser was worth a lot of money but because he was moving he would be prepared to let it go for a reasonable price. He quoted a figure of several hundred pounds.

We thanked him for showing us his dresser and promised to get back to him.

Our first inclination was to say 'no'. It was just too large, too Victorian.

But it was an amazing piece of furniture.

We finally decided to make what we would call today a 'low ball offer', far less that he had asked. We were sure he would reject the offer out of hand, but if we could get it for that price we were offering, well then...

We wrote with our offer, but didn't hear from him.

Weeks went by and we decided that he had torn up our letter in disgust.

And then came the Saturday morning phone call!

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We got dressed quickly and went downstairs, just as the moving van was pulling up.

I went out to the truck to talk to the boss and his two helpers. They showed me the two parts of the dresser (we hadn't known that the top came off!), carefully covered with heavy blankets. The boss asked us where we would like them to put the dresser. Pat and I had a hurried caucus. The living and dining rooms were too small and already too crowded with furniture to take the dresser. We finally decided that it should be 'stored' in the hallway until we returned to Canada.

The boss nodded but said the bottom would be a problem. It was too wide to go through the narrow front door. (You can just see the door to the right of the bow window in the photo below.)

Our bedroom was on the second floor, the room with the upper bow windows. It was the lower bow windows that had to be removed to get the sideboard in. Note the plumbing 'waste' pipes placed on the outside of the house, "So it is easier to get at them when they freeze."

The only answer, he said, was to remove the bow windows.

We were horrified. These windows with their old glass had been in place since the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, and since the American War of Independence in 1775!

And what would the landlord, an elderly maiden lady who lived up the street, say if she should come by when the windows were out?

The boss said that windows like ours were removed all the time. It was the only way to get large items into (or out of) old houses.

I reluctantly agreed.

We held our breath as the windows came out, the dresser went in, and the windows were replaced.

And the landlord didn't come by.

The movers had obviously done this before.

We gave them a cheque for Mr. Bell, and the movers took off.

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In 1963 we moved to London, with the dresser, which we were now calling 'the sideboard'.

Friends in London---who loved antiques from the Georgian period---sometimes made fun of our ebullient sideboard.

One asked, "If you plug it in, will it play pretty music?"

Another joked, "How will you get it back to Canada? Sail it?"

When it came time to return to Canada, the moving company built a special plywood crate for it, and it arrived safely in Ottawa.

Over the years we have moved it 10 or so times. One of the first questions whenever we have been house-hunting was: 'Where will the sideboard go?'

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As the children left home and life slowed down a bit, Pat started to do some research into the sideboard. In this she was helped by the details stamped into the top of the drawer

Lamb, Manchester, and the number 22631

 In correspondence with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Pat found that James Lamb (born 1816, died 1903) had taken over his family's small furniture business and by the 1860s (when our sideboard was built) had turned it into a major firm renowned for its elaborate furniture. Lamb exhibited and won prizes at several World Expositions.

The Victoria and Albert had two of Lamb's sideboards, and now has photos and a description of ours, provided by Pat. The Museum said that we should consider ourselves fortunate to have a fine example of Lamb's work. "You are in good company."

Here are some images that show close-ups of some of the carved panels and other decoration.

Mr. Bell called these figures 'dragons'.  Let's just say they are figures from mythology---which ones we are not sure.

Note how deeply carved this is, out of one piece of English oak !

Another figure from mythology. Some kind of animal with wings? 

An interesting feature of the sideboard is the zinc-lined champagne cooler shown below.

In the 19th century, wealthy English (the 1% of the time!) imported ice from North America that was cut from the winter ice in the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers and from rivers in Massachusetts and shipped to the UK in sawdust. The ice was kept in 'ice houses' and used to chill champagne and to make desserts.

To the right of the drawer is a hollow box, along which the drawer slides as it is withdrawn. It has been suggested that the hollow box may have been used to store family documents and treasures. So far we have resisted the impulse to open it and see what, if any, secrets it contains---more honestly, because we can't figure out how to open it. 

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When Pat started her research on the sideboard, the information was sketchy. In the last few years there has been an explosion of scholarly research on both the Lamb company and on the different styles it used for its furniture.

It is now clear that James Lamb was in the top rank of 19th century British furniture makers, recognized both in Britain and on the continent. He followed prevailing styles but because he was in Manchester, not London, it seems as though it took him a few years to adopt the latest fashions.

We know that Lamb contracted with French artists to design panels for his cabinets and then found superb carvers to execute them.

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Some people have asked what the sideboard would be worth if we were to sell it.

The first point to make is that we are NOT going to sell it.

But with that out of the way, it is hard to know what its market value would be today.

It is clearly worth a great deal more than we paid for it, but it is hard to say whether it is worth more than that purchase price plus the amounts we have paid to cart it around from place to place!

Large pieces of ornate antique furniture are not in great demand. Interior decorators and homeowners seem to want furniture that is minimalist---something that the sideboard is definitely not!

Perhaps the best answer is to paraphrase the commercials used by MasterCard, in which people are seen buying items with their credit card. Then the scene shifts to some joyful experience and the announcer intones, "There are some things money can't buy."

To us, the sideboard is one of those things---it is priceless.

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See you on March 11, 2012 for Posting #139 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

Posting # 7 of The Icewine Guru blog is now up. The Guru offer his views on the birth control furor in the US and whether it was 'an epic blunder' by Obama, or a clever trap set by him for the Republicans. Click on  http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #106

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Homebrew in Harrogate

You may have read about the Obamas serving homebrew at their Super Bowl party, a Honey Ale made by their chefs using honey collected from a beehive on the south lawn of the White House. Guests had a choice of commercial beers from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin---home states of the competing Super Bowl teams---or the White House Honey Ale.

I know which I would have chosen.

It makes me thirsty, just thinking about.

And it all reminded me of my first venture into the making of homebrew.

It was 1962 and we were living in a small, two hundred year old Georgian cottage in Harrogate, Yorkshire.

I was exploring and enjoying the tastes of British bitters and ales, so different from the bland Labatt's and Molson brews that we drank at university, but I kept running into people who told me that the commercial products couldn't compare with the 'real thing', homebrewed British beer.

Factory-made beer, they argued, was homogenized, pasteurized and otherwise stripped of its British character.

There were many beer-makers in Britain at the time, some of them getting very scientific with precise analysis of the ingredients, and careful control of sugar content and of things like the exact temperature of mashing and fermentation. Their recipes all called for the use of a hydrometer---more about that later on.

It all sounded a lot like  a chemistry class.

I opted instead for a beer recipe I found in an ancient Yorkshire  cookbook. I would be producing a true Yorkshire beer, the kind that for centuries had sustained that county's  hardworking coal miners and farm labourers.

Soon I had my first brew fermenting away in a plastic dustbin (translation: a brand-new, white garbage pail). As the beer fermented, I scrounged a collection of  20 quart beer bottles of the kind in use in Britain at the time, heavy brown bottles with a screw-in top (click here for a picture of  one of those bottles  

One of the joys---and frustrations---of old recipes is their damnable imprecision. They use expressions like,  "a pinch of this', "butter the size of an egg", "beat until thick", "bake until done", and so on.

My beer recipe said that I should bottle the beer when "the fermentation has finished'. There was a warning that I shouldn't leave the bottling too long or the beer would "go off'.

The problem is that beer is a living thing and fermentation doesn't totally stop at some point in time, leaving a placid, calm surface---there is always some activity, some bubbles. I found it hard to gauge when the fermentation was sufficiently complete to permit bottling.

Finally, I made an executive decision that the time had come to bottle the beer. I carefully added a spoonful of sugar syrup to each bottle to provide the food for a little fermentation in the bottle that would provide for a good head when the beer was poured. Then I siphoned the beer into the bottles, tightly screwed in the tops and placed the bottles on shelves in a little pantry off our kitchen.

And started to wait for the two or three weeks until the beer in the bottles was clear and  ready to drink.

Then, in the middle of one night there was a suspicious noise from the kitchen. Pat was pregnant at the time and needed her sleep so I quietly put on some clothes and went down to investigate.

I was met by foaming beer running along the stone floor of the kitchen with shards of glass everywhere.

Oh, oh!

After I cleaned up the mess, I sat down and tried to think what to do.

It was clear that I had bottled the beer too soon, that there was sugar that hadn't been converted to alcohol and in adding sugar syrup I had created the conditions for a lethal pressure of carbon dioxide in the bottles.

That's where a hydrometer comes in.

I am sure you used an hydrometer in high school science classes but just to refresh your memory, it is a glass cylinder with a bulb at the bottom weighted down with mercury or lead. The cylinder floats in a beaker of liquid and measures its specific gravity.

It is not to be confused with a hygrometer---but let's not go there.

In beer making, the hydrometer tells whether the sugar has all been converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide. And whether it is safe to bottle.

So I had 19 bottles of over-pressurized beer sitting on the shelves in the pantry. Or in today's parlance, nineteen IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices), or perhaps, more accurately, 19 UED's (Unimprovised Explosive Devices).

How to disarm them?

I decided that the only thing to do was to take each bottle gingerly---very gingerly---to the kitchen sink, unscrew the top and let the beer flow out, and down the drain.

But I would need to wear some protective gear, just in case one of the bottles decided to go 'kaboom'.

My improvised anti-explosion equipment consisted of a hat, sunglasses, leather gloves and my leather Arthur Tigers Hockey Team jacket, which I wore back to front. (While in high school, I had played as a left winger with the Tigers and after a particularly successful season there had been enough box-office money left to buy us all jackets.)

I wish I had a picture of that outfit!

One-by-one, I took the bottles to the sink, loosened the tops, turned my head to the side as beer sprayed  every which way,  and once the pressure was released,  poured the beer down the sink.

There were no explosions but for a while the kitchen smelled like an old Ontario beer parlour (without the cigarette smoke, of course!).

After that experience I decided that I would turn my back on old Yorkshire recipes and follow more modern recipes. The taste might be a little lacking in character but the process would be a whole lot safer with the new hydrometer I had bought and learned to use.

I continued brewing beer and using the screw-in top bottles during the rest of our stay in Britain and for many years in Canada (I brought a good number of the beer bottles home with us.)

With the large number of excellent craft breweries in Ontario one no longer needs to 'brew it yourself' to get a beer that has the authentic taste of pungent hops and rich malt. 

I got rid of my bottles, and my hydrometer.

I am no longer a home-brewer, but the article about the White House ale started me thinking.

My brother, Jim, and his wife, Fannie, raise bees and produce a superb honey.

Doesn't "Hunter Honey Ale" have a nice ring to it?

But I would have to buy a hydrometer.

And I'm really busy at the moment.

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See you on March 20th for Posting #107 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting,  or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.