Day: May 5, 2003

Own a piece of the Club

campaign chest

The Colonnade Club, that is. I got a circular in the mail today about an auction at Harlowe-Powell in Charlottesville of many antiques and art objects that have been “deaccessioned” from the Colonnade Club at UVA, the faculty club that sits in Pavilion VII.

This was the first pavilion, or professorial residence and lecture hall, that Jefferson built in his original suite of buildings for the university, but it has long since become the permanent home of the faculty club and is now reopening after a long renovation. Apparently the club has to auction some of the items that it’s accrued in the intervening 180 years to pay for some of the restoration work.

The details of the auction are here. Although I’m a member, I haven’t spent much time inside the club, but I do remember a few of the pieces, in particular this spectacular sideboard.

Must be spring

Adam notes that he was hard at work this weekend too. Sounds harder than the stuff I was doing:

… we attacked our overgrown and uncared for backyard. We cleared out blackberry bushes and weeds as well as a dump pile that included 5 sections of fencing, a christmas tree, and a trampoline. In total, we filled 20+ yard bags of waste. We also discovered that there’s a 10′ x 15′ concrete slab out back which is now the future home of a shed or patio.…

Yikes. Reminds me of a time in college when some friends, in their annual cleaning of a house they had rented for several years running, decided it was finally time to clean out the back yard. After bushwhacking all the ivy and other plants back, they found that there was an entire terrace that had been hidden by all the overgrowth, complete with steps.