House tour: living room, part 4

This week's house tour focuses on a little set-up I have next to the bookcase.


The organ once belonged to my grandparents (see photo below). After they died my brother and I insisted that we should keep it so it sat in the hallway of my mother's house for awhile. Then my mother decided to sell her house and promptly shipped this thing all the way to Austin, Texas, where I was living at the time. (I guess that proves how badly she wanted to get rid of it.) So it's been around. I don't really know how to play it (and it really doesn't sound cool, it sounds like a church), but it makes a nifty side table.

Here it is in its original habitat.


I bought these old tintypes at a flea market on 19th St and they sat gathering dust for a couple of years before I figured out what to do with them (they don't really fit into any traditional frames, which was the main problem).

I ended up buying a few cheap, larger frames, spraypainting them black, and cutting a tintype-size shape out of black paper to use as a matte.


I like the contrast between the black and white and brightly colored creamers (an eBay find). (I really should have dusted before taking the photos!)


I love starburst clocks, but since I can't afford to buy the real thing, this much less expensive reproduction (which quite resembles these George Nelson ball clocks) makes a more than adequate substitute. The hanging art is from a printmaking class I took in college. It's actually the chipboard printing plate, which I think looks cooler than the actual prints it produces.


I remember wanting to experiment with using text to create a pattern. I should have just used random letters (I tend to dislike actual words and phrases used in artwork, preferring the aesthetic use of type disconnected from any literal meaning). But I instead made a reference to "Bullet in the Brain," a short story by Tobias Wolff that I was a bit obsessed with at the time. Maybe I'll replace it if something else that I like better finds its way into my hands (especially since wall space in my house is becoming pretty scarce). But for now it stays.