Fine-grained details
Wednesday, 18 February 2015
Drayton Hall, c. 1750 (but for over a century believed to date a decade earlier), mantel detail.
We visited the American version of the English version of Classical Greek/Roman decorative arts. Not sure what mythical moment this is honoring, maybe…let’s look at flowers because it’s really cold out…thankfully sunny, but still cold.
A little chemistry and political economy…. In the depression that followed the Civil…umhem, War between the States, an economic downturn that lasted for about six decades in the Charleston (SC) area, savvy landholders benefitted from mining calcium phosphate along the Ashley River and nearby (upstream of Charleston). The calcium phosphate was processed to make particularly rich agricultural fertilizer. By the 1880s, the phosphate from this field dominated world production. But it didn’t last long…new fields discovered in Florida were easier to mine, and there were other market shifts.
Enough of this…sleep tight.