Transforming the House
Sometimes when I pick up a treasure, I’m not exactly sure what I will do with it. This handmade pottery house was an estate sale find from a week ago ($2 -I kid you not). I have no idea what the house was designed for, though I suspect it was a student’s project from many years ago. It has an open roof in back, which is useful to carry it as it weighs 9 pounds! But no clear idea as to why. Note the fabulous details: the sagging roof line; impression of brick work; window boxes with plants and the front doorknob! The colors and details appealed to me, so I brought it home. I kept moving it around our house -until it finally landed here. And suddenly it made sense!
Husband will comment as various treasures migrate around the house, and recently noted that this photograph has remained in the same spot for many years. It is an original one by Roland Reed (1864-1934) from 1910. I picked it up at an estate sale in the 1990s for my husband, as he read a great deal about Native American history, and appreciates their culture. The dealer threw it in for free with the other things I bought that day.
Roland Reed was among a number of “pictoralists” who wanted to depict the Indian’s way of life before they were forced into reservations, instead of recording what the reality of their lives were like at the turn of the last century. He worked with a large format 11x17 camera and produced 180 glass plate negatives (there’s a gallery dedicated to his work in Steamboat Springs, CO). The photograph is titled “Meditation” and notes the tribe is Piegan, a Plains Indian tribe. Current value of an original seems to be $2,000.
The charming clay house now resides beneath Meditation. The colors of the two are similar, and the photo and house seem to belong together. There are many connotations to this juxtaposition, some positive and some not so much. The house represents “home”, and for the American Indians that “home” was taken away. Yet, we all desire a “home” whether in physical structure, or mental construct, and this land, once inhabited by Native Americans, has become our home.
Recently I took a trip east to visit two of my childhood homes; the house from my early years in Chappaqua, NY and the one in Darien, CT from adolescence. Walking through the Chappaqua house was remarkable, as the feeling was one of awareness – I KNEW the place even though I could not have described it well before-hand. The memories were from my very young childhood (about 4 to 6) and I greatly enjoyed revisiting them. This home has been lovingly maintained, and the sense that the current owners respect the home and its history was a joy. The second home I visited on that trip was a very different story. This was the house I lived in through my adolescence, and the current owners had transformed the house such that it was almost unrecognizable. The shell was the same, but literally windows were gone, structures were added, walls moved around, and all redesigned and glamorized. I respect that people can make their mark on their properties as they desire, but, as a person looking back into memories, it is jarring to walk through.
I sense the Piegans in the photograph might feel much the same way. I cannot speak for them, and the tragedy of their history is not one I can address here. However, I treasure both the photograph for its glimpse into the past, and the clay house for its determination to weather all the storms life has thrown at it.