Gentle Readers: a story like this comes along but once a year. It would be cruel not to share it with you. Here it is, the back story on the drapes featured in Wednesday’s post.
“Then came the curtains. I’m from no-where Illinois and my favorite aunt has made it big and bought an amazing $5 million house in North Atlanta that looks like a country french wonderland:
“When she moved in, her designer girlfriend immediately took down the custom window treatments in the kitchen and dining rooms. She left them on the floor in the three car garage next to the matching jaguars.
“Then my Beverly Hillbilly family came to visit the big house. Grandma Betty saw those fancy curtains on the floor and couldn’t believe the girls were going to just throw them away. She threw them in the back of the 1983 Crown Vic they had driven down to Atlanta in and took those bad boys home.
“She thought she’d be able to use them at her place that my Grandpa built himself over 60 years ago. Unfortunately, the 12 foot high panels didn’t really work in her little ranch house with 10 foot ceilings. She can’t sew and they ended up in a cabinet above the closet in the extra bedroom that was originally the garage but converted when they had kids # 4,5, and six (the triplets).
“The curtains stayed in the unheated Illinois closet for the last 13 years-except for two panels that escaped when Grandma put them in a garage sale.
“In early January 2009, I went to visit Grandma Betty when she got out of the hospital just before she passed away. She had me rooting around in the closet looking for some old photo albums and I came across the curtains. I immediately knew they had come from my rich aunt’s house and asked Grandma how they came to be stuffed up in the closet. She told me about the visit and the garage and the trunk.
“Next thing you know, those curtains were rolled up, put in an old dehumidifier box I found in the basement, checked on Delta and flying back to Atlanta with me.”
– Jenna
Now THAT, as they say in the art history world, is a heck of a provenance. Thanks so much for telling us about it, Jenna!