Grandma’s Bookcase

When I was a child my father’s mother lived in Blackpool.  There was a desk with a bookcase on it – and it was full of old fashioned books of the sort you rarely see anymore.  My first introduction to the William Brown books of Richmal Crompton came from here (it was “William the Gangster” in faded hardback signed and dated in a childish hand by my father in 1939), as well as a rather less fond first taste of Dickens and Tennyson.  There were also other books along the lines of “Ten Boys out of History” – the boy emperor, the boy general etc – with no girls in them at all.

Anyway, when my grandmother died my father insisted against my mother’s wishes on taking the desk and bookcase, and they travelled with my parents to various houses.  The desk died of damp from being left in a garden shed, but the bookcase survived and came to me via my Mum’s garage.  It has been sitting in my garage since Christmas; I built a stand for it back in January but I had been waiting for J to assist me in completing it.  So now he finally has and I moved it into the house today.

Because it had been supposed to sit on a desk, it looked strange sitting straight on the floor, so I built a simple wooden plinth to raise it up.  I covered it with the same wallpaper as on the lower part of the walls and painted it the same Brunswick green.  I fixed the trim on the top of the bookcase, reattached the shelves inside and polished the whole thing up.  I think it looks quite good.

Sitting on the top – the two Delft tiles are another blast from the past.  They are lovely 19th century tiles, but when we encountered them they were set in a hideous 1950s grey concrete fireplace.  My dad demolished the fireplace (replacing it with a 1980s wooden one which was probably equally hideous to modern eyes) but we kept the tiles.  I had them on my wall at Donich Lodge where sadly one got broken – the other is a toothbrush stand in my bathroom upstairs.