A Summery Edition

A few weeks ago, I was perusing pictures of the Winchester Mansion out in California. This eclectic house was built by Sarah Winchester who, for her own reasons, kept the house in a constant state of construction. She believed that ghosts of the people killed by the firearms created by her family roamed the house. Thus, it's become a tourist stop (I'd love to go there), a place of peculiar interest, and a semi-mecca for people who have a love of the occult. The house has stairs leading nowhere, doors that open to nothing, rooms askew.. it's an architectural oddity. And in the midst of these pictures of spider webs in stained glass, stairs being where they have no business being, etc.. I saw pictures of the greenhouse attached to the mansion.

Every victorian mansion had one, either attached to the main house or stand alone.. but they had one. In comparison to the rest of the house, the Greenhouse looked.. normal. I sat back, and thought.. something should be different. It's so, bright.. and normal looking.

So, I set out to create the greenhouse that in my mind's eye, should have been the Winchester greenhouse. It's solid looking, highly detailed.. and was created to be the focal point of a build.
Everything from the baked shadows on the floor to the door creaking open and closed is designed to give a feeling of ambiance. As you walk up the stained concrete steps, a broken hasp lies on the stoop, part of the broken lock still hanging next to the door. Vines, breaking free from the crates that brought them, have taken over a full end of the greenhouse (custom plants, designed by me)while a planter of vines sits further in. Unused trellises are leaned up against the glass and a work table is set with bags of potting soil left on the shelf below. Strange and unusual diagrams and drawings are scattered about the table where a gramophone/victrola and a potted plant sit. Touch the gramophone, it cranks.. then you hear the hiss of the wax record before Chopin's Waltz in A minor begins. A few steps toward the fountain.. and the door slams shut. The fountain sits at the very back in a round brick centerpiece, the whole greenhouse drawing you toward it. It bubbles serenely along as you sit at the edge of the cistern and dabble your fingers in the water.

This piece is primmy.. but I really wanted to give it the detail it had in my mind's eye. The individual objects may be removed.. but it's to be taken as a whole. It's not the Winchester Greenhouse.. but it is, to my mind.. what should have been there.


***
Addendum: Many thanks to the Primgraph for kindly mentioning CFF in their coverage of the Home Expo 2010.
***