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Wooden Ball & Chain Portieres, Fretwork or Curtains

Wooden Ball and Chain Fretwork

This is the incredible new "old house" built by Chris & Lisa Couper in Shingle Springs, CA for which we were proud and honored to create four Wooden Ball & Chain Portieres. Their obsessive attention to every detail of Victorian architecture has created a breathtaking work of art.



Here is a little history from Chris:

Our goal was to create a believable Victorian home without sacrificing modern conveniences and minimize maintenance where possible. We felt the most important aspects of creating an authentic looking Victorian era are with regard to size and scale of the elements. In period Victorian homes, even small ones, the size and scale of the ceilings, rooms, decoration and features were generally much larger than contemporary homes today. This scale disappears when you look at a distance, but up close its easy to notice that the home is a reproduction when the fretwork is small or the ceilings are low or the trim is narrow. We placed the house on a raised foundation of split concrete block to simulate granite, made the ceilings all 10 feet or better and used large sized trim boards to give the home a grand feeling.

The other key to a successful reproduction home is the attention to detail. If the Victorians did something it was generally done with a lot of embellishment, at least in the public places. They used fretwork to accent lines and shapes, multiple colors to call out emphasis and textures to enhance shadow lines for example. Our home has thousands of feet of molding both inside and out around door frames and windows. The formal floors are hand made parquet and the floor tiles are encaustic or natural quarry stone in complex patterns.

We used quarter sawn white oak instead of plain sliced for the flooring, the staircase and cabinets. All the rooms are adorned with hand printed wallpaper on walls and ceilings and while different colors, have an integrated theme. The lighting is either real period pieces or very accurate reproductions.

Our home complements the Victorian era artwork of our ancestors and allows us to showcase our furnishings along with the artwork, which is typical for Victorian era homes.


Couper home portieres

Couper home portieres
Couper home portieres

Would you like to see more images of our Wooden Ball & Chain Portieres, Fretwork or Curtains?



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