A Themed House in the Edwardian Period
The Virtual Tour of the Historic Downstairs
A Virtual Tour of the Music Room and Dining Room
Upstairs at the Abernethy-Shaw Home
For the 2025 Pilgrimage Tour of Homes the current custodians of the home are presenting the house as it might have appeared on such a tour in the year 1919, the very end of the time we call Edwardian. The downstairs rooms in the original area of the home are decorated in an overall design that shows the transition period between Victorian formality and Craftsman simplicity, which is typical of early 20th century homes of this caliber. The woodwork, particularly in the entry, is a standout feature that exemplifies the Craftsman movement's emphasis on natural materials and fine craftsmanship.
The home has been styled to showcase the current owners’ period appropriate collection of paintings and artifacts with a special emphasis on the historical turn from The Victorian Period to The Modern Age. This transition is the essence of the period we generally call The Edwardian.
The year 1919 stands as a pivotal moment that crystallized America's transition from Victorian-era sensibilities to modernist consciousness. The end of World War I had shattered many Americans' nineteenth-century notions of progress and morality, while the Russian Revolution, the first Red Scare, and a wave of labor strikes and racial violence (particularly during the "Red Summer") challenged traditional power structures and social hierarchies. Prohibition's ratification signaled both the last gasp of Victorian moral reform movements and, paradoxically, helped usher in the rebellious spirit of the 1920s with its speakeasy culture and organized crime.
The cultural tensions of 1919 manifested in profound ways - the Black Sox scandal undermined America's pastoral vision of baseball, while the success of writers like Sherwood Anderson ("Winesburg, Ohio") marked a shift from genteel romanticism to starker realism. The year saw women finally win the right to vote through the 19th Amendment, accelerating changes in gender roles that had begun during the war. Urban life, with its jazz clubs, automobiles, and new consumer culture, was increasingly displacing rural values and traditional Victorian restraints. The embrace of Freudian psychology, modern art, and new technologies like radio broadcasting signaled an irreversible break with 19th-century worldviews. Perhaps most significantly, 1919 marked the emergence of a distinctly modern American anxiety about social change, mass culture, and moral relativism. It was a year when the nineteenth century's certainties finally gave way to modernist ambiguities.
The Historical portion of the tour will include the Front Porch and Front Hall, the Parlor, and The Music Room. As an embodiment of the spirit of generational change, in the Dining Room the owners will be mixing period appropriate furnishing with their collection of immediate Post-WWII paintings that, in their turn, illustrate the shifting paradigm from the modern to the post-modern.
The Front Hall incorporates an English stained class book cabinet with bronze inlays ca. 1905.
The parlor with mixed Victorian and Edwardian decorative elements. Accessories are in the style of Louis XVI which had a revival in the late 19th century.
The staging of the home is not meant to be an historic recreation of the house as it was when occupied in 1919. It is assembled as a curated history experience, a theme park ride of sorts through an idealized representation of the waning days of styles like Art Nouveau, The Arts and Crafts Movement, and life just after the Great War.
Comments
Post a Comment