February 17, 2008

A whatnot from the past

By Gene Krider

After last week’s diatribe against old age, I want to recall two pieces of furniture in our home that I grew up with. They are a whatnot and a sofa table.

Does anyone remember a “whatnot” or even what one is? I am surprised my computer spell-checker recognized the word. In my earlier days, a whatnot was a small wooden ornamental set of shelves intended to be hung in a corner.

The one we had was about two feet high with the dark-stained sides made of a cutout pattern using scrolls in a sort of vine-like pattern. The shelf fronts were rounded. It must have been acquired with my parents wedding furnishings in 1928.

I always remember it hanging in a corner of the living room, containing a small white Chinese-style five-sided demitasse cup with gilded handle and feet; a very small blue Wedgwood-type vase with a white fancy-dressed man (because the figure had a sword) on one side; a plain blue high-glazed egg cup with a gilded interior; and a very small white pitcher probably for a doll house. I was told that these items were my grandmother’s from New Orleans, and I was not to touch them because they were very valuable.

Naturally, I stood on a chair and handled the things to see what was on their back sides, living truth that you should never tell children not to touch anything because you can be sure that they will. Their only value was to my grandmother. Now, I have all four pieces in my living room but I do not know what happened to the whatnot.

Another thing I remember was a tall, narrow table that was called a library or sofa table. Properly this table was meant to stand behind a sofa but we never had a living room large enough to have a sofa away from a wall. Furniture always marched around the walls in military precision.

In our house, the table was placed against a wall in the hall, a handy catch-all place.

My great-aunt, Mattie Short, was the arbiter of taste and behavior for the Krider family. When she was sitting in our living room, she proclaimed that it was now fashionable to have a coffee table in front of a living room sofa. After she left I proposed to Mother that I cut the legs off so it would be at sofa height. She readily agreed and I went about the task.

The sofa table had two big urn-shaped legs that rested on a stretcher with horizontal carved legs under the urns. I cut the table legs off in the middle of each urn, installed the large pin screws in the shortened legs; and put the table back together. It worked perfectly and we were fashionable again.

That Christmas, Uncle Gilmer (who worked at Blackwelder Furniture) and Aunt Elmire gave us a Chinese Chippendale coffee table. The now-coffee table went back into the hall and Mother used it to hold her Avon orders. When my parents moved from Buffalo to Kelly Street, the table was put in their den for the same purpose.

After the death of our parents, we sorted out the home contents among us and I got the table I had shortened. Now, it is in my den in front of the sofa.

The table is exactly 80 years old and is still sturdy. After I am gone, one of my children will take it and put it to good use “ad infinitum.”