Tiffany Chair

For Material Culture today, our assignment was to find a piece of furniture fitting within the time periods of Eastlake, Art, Arts and Crafts, or Art Nouveau. When I found that Louis Comfort Tiffany made Art Nouveau chairs, I had to do that! I didn't know that the Tiffany Glass and Decorations Company made furniture, but Tiffany was trained in all types of decorative arts, including metalwork, painting, ceramics, and wood work. This particular chair was made in 1892 in New York City. The diamond-shapes on the arms are really intricately detailed. Each piece of wood making up the diamond is surrounded by a minute layer of brass. It's a very cool chair, and I enjoyed learning about it. Everyone liked that Tiffany reported on a Tiffany chair :-)

We are famous for our T-Dud exhibit and presentations! The Charleston Courier printed up a big article about our project!! We've gotten really good feedback about it, and people are telling us that they are excited to hear the remaining presentations. In fact, Catherine and I found out that one of the Political Science professors has offered his students extra credit if they attend our October 28 presentation about Tilford's career--whoa, no pressure there! The Dudley House isn't very big, so we can't fit too many more people in there than we had last week. I think I forgot to mention on Sunday that the Coles County Historical Society served birthday cake at the exhibit opening--in honor of Tilford's 100th birthday :-) All of the professors love the website I updated the other day--especially the fact that they can access the Dudley exhibit.

Well, I have a random Halloween-ish date on Saturday! A few weeks ago at church, one of the men there was asking me about myself, and he said, "Hmmm, I have a son who lives in Springfield. I'll need to set you two up sometime." I didn't really think anymore about it, but then a couple of weeks ago the son, Greg, showed up at church. We just talked for a few minutes, and he seemed really nice, but again, I didn't really think anything of it after I left church that day. But then last night I got a call from Greg, who just so happens to be a mortician up in Springfield! How random is that? :-) He's going to come pick me up on Saturday, and we're going to spend the day in Springfield. He especially wants to go to the Museum of Funeral Customs--which is where I've been wanting to go!! How funny is that--I'm going to be going to the Museum of Funeral Customs with a mortician! :-) The museum is located in the same cemetery where Abe Lincoln is buried, and I guess it's a pretty famous place. I never thought I'd be going on a date with a mortician, but somebody's got to do that job. And, you know that he'll always have a job--definite job security there. He does seem very nice, so I am excited. It's kind of funny because he did part of his schooling in Utah and interned at a mortuary in Orem, where I'm from (the Sunburg-Olpin). Ha ha, it's a small world! Today Catherine and Sarah were asking me about the date, and I told them that we are going up to the Museum of Funeral Customs. They thought that was totally cool, and then we started talking about how we should all do our internships there. We decided that instead of living history programs, we could have dying history programs! :-)