Day 221—Louis XIV

Years ago, my late husband and I went to an estate sale, which estate sale was liquidating the possessions of a very-much-alive and vibrant octogenarian who was moving from her beautiful home in Fair Oaks, California to an assisted living facility and who wanted to advise every buyer about the history of every piece they were purchasing. She was a delightful woman and when Ron expressed an interest in an ornate mahogany chair with caning, she was quick to tell us that it was a Louis XIV chair, and she lovingly described the chair as if The Sun King himself had settled into it a few hundred years before. In actuality, it was manufactured in the Ohio by the Stomps-Burkhardt Chair Company sometime in 1920’s. The chair was a wedding present she told us. Of course we were enthralled with her tales of the chair and brought it home with us.

I took several shots of the chair’s worn caning because today’s daily challenge theme is “patterns” and I love caning and have several chairs with caning, this being the most beautiful and well crafted of the caned chairs I own. When I turned the chair over to see how to spell the name of the furniture company, I decided the label was a more interesting shot than the caning itself. And, when I downloaded the photos, I realized that the 90 year old plus paper label is crackled making a more interesting pattern than the caning. So I photographed the label with its crackled finish and with the caning mostly blurred in the foreground.

Focal Length 300mm
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/5 second
WB Fine Weather
Cropped