Victorian Valentine’s Day Mantle-scape
Valentine’s Day is a bummer, except in the aesthetics department
Karrie Witkin
When we moved into our current apartment, I couldn’t decide what to do with the focal point of the living room, the wall above the fireplace. I ended up leaving it empty and using that space to rotate different objects and flower arrangements in and out. My current mantle display is more theme-y than usual. Let’s call it Victorian Valentine’s Day. I dislike everything about this holiday except for the aesthetics of it. So, this mantle-scape represents my effort to reclaim the story of pink, red, hearts, and flowers from its association with romantic disappointment, forced sentimentality, and emotionally scarring popularity contests (i.e. those dreadful middle school candy-gram fundraisers)!
About the bits and pieces: The tarnished silver vases, candlesticks, and marble fruit belonged to my grandmother. The branches and flowers were purchased at a bodega (corner store) for $48 total. This was $16 more than I intended to spend. I bought sweetheart roses that wilted after four days, so I replaced them with heartier carnations. The branches are drying beautifully and I will reuse them in many arrangements to come.
I made the red paper hearts, the playing card garland, and the tissue paper poufs from materials in my stash while catching up on some recorded Morbid Anatomy lectures about seances and witch-hunting.
The real treasures here are the quilled paper hearts, cupids, and snowflakes hanging from the branches. My partner’s mother, Carole Jordan, gave them to me. Her friend, Peg Kelbley, made the ornaments in 1980 for a fundraiser and Carole bought them all (for $1 each) before Peg could sell them to anyone else. How lucky am I that this collection of exquisite handwork is intact and in my home?
Another major delight is the vintage pop-up card that I bought at an antiques fair. It came with the original envelope. The postmark is Feb. 13, 1929 and it is addressed to Elberta Hubbard in Los Angeles, Calif., from Elizabeth Dean in Elk Rapids, Mich. Proof that Galentine’s Day is not a new thing.
It took 12 hours, spread over six days, to pull this together. This includes the time spent clearing off the mantle, going through my art supplies and ephemera collections, arranging the flowers twice (because of the dead roses), doing the paper crafting, and taking photos. In my experience a lot of home décor and lifestyle content leaves you with the impression that it’s quick and easy to restyle your space. That’s obviously not the case.
What I’d like to emphasize is the value of spending time engaging with my own objects and collections. I took so much pleasure in flipping through the playing cards, selecting shades of pink and red paper, and examining the detailed construction of those quilled ornaments. It was time spent not scrolling through social media, looking wistfully at other people’s stuff, and talking myself out of buying things.
As a fun exercise, I rearranged some of my mantle objects in different areas of the apartment to get an idea of how they would look in smaller-scale combinations (ones that would take less time and effort to arrange).
Slow Notion would love to hear about your own vignettes of thrifted, vintage, handmade, passed-down, and beloved objects. You don’t need to create elaborate mantle-scapes (unless you want to!) A tabletop, self, dresser, windowsill, or any space that you like to curate with storied items is deeply interesting to our community.
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