We own a building with an apartment and a business in it. I guess we are landlords but I have nothing to do with it, it is my husband's 'thing'.
Next door lived a single man for many, many years. My husband, kind hearted as he is, would stop and chat with him, affording him some human contact that he sadly had so little of.
When he began to notice not seeing him around for several weeks he became concerned and called the police to investigate. They found him, passed away in bed since several weeks.
Fast forward three months. The building sold and new people came in and began gutting the building. They were sensitive to anything they could maintain to the history of the building; these are all Victorian era houses but, ultimately, most of it had to go.
We stopped by to see their progress the other day. It was stripped to the rafters. Above the fireplace, however, was the last in a series of wallpapers. I immediately felt a connection to this paper (sounds a bit out there but, you know) and asked if I could take some. Sure they said, bemused, it was all coming down to be drywalled anyway.
It was really really brittle. I managed to get this one fragment intact enough to hold in my hands. As we walked home, my husband wondered what plans I had for it. I didn't know, exactly, but it was so evocative, so lovely to me I knew something could come of it.
Besides using it in this post, my plan is to make some color copies of it and incorporate the motif into a card, collage or some other paper project... maybe with that old typeset I got at the flea market... I always trust things to make sense if I follow my instincts...
