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A quiet snowy afternoon.

An unex­pect­ed snowy after­noon made for some nice pho­tos to share. The beau­ti­ful black wrought iron of the Camp­bell House fence always looks good in the against the snow. The pho­tos high­light the three unique finials on the fence.

Restored Glass Installed!

Reg­u­lar read­ers and fol­low­ers will recall that last sum­mer the Camp­bell House was van­dal­ized and a his­toric piece of etched glass in our entry doors was smashed. Read more about that here and here.

Thanks to our gen­er­ous sup­port­ers on Twit­ter and friends on Face­book, we raised almost enough funds to restore the bro­ken piece.  It proved to be a dif­fi­cult task to find an arti­san who was will­ing to take on this com­pli­cat­ed project. Thank­ful­ly we hired  local artist Lea Koester­er who care­ful­ly worked through the many chal­lenges this project pre­sent­ed.

A few days ago the restored glass was installed and the results are mag­nif­i­cent. Check out the pho­tos below.

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Camp­bell House front doors: orig­i­nal etched glass on the right and space left by the bro­ken glass on the left.

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The new piece of glass is care­ful­ly unwrapped after trav­el­ling from the artist’s studio.

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Lea Koester­er does some last-minute touch-up.

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Can you tell which one is the new piece of glass? It is the one on the left.

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Lea Koester­er proud­ly stands by the fin­ished product.

Thank you Lea and all the donors who helped us com­plete this project. We still have a lit­tle more fundrais­ing to do the com­plete this project. Please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion below.

Surgery on the Schomacker

Our beloved box grand piano is due for a tuning.

It has­n’t been worked on since some of the Camp­bells were still alive, so we’re eas­i­ly talk­ing 100 years. Four keys did­n’t do any­thing, and the sound? Three words: Nails. On. Chalk­board. Vir­ginia bought the Schomack­er & Co. piano in Philadel­phia short­ly after the Camp­bells moved in. The orig­i­nal price was $500, but she got a $25 discount.

We thought if the piano was repaired, cleaned up and tuned, we could host mini con­certs in the par­lor and have oth­er events where the piano could be fea­tured. (You know, use the piano like the Camp­bells did.) We want the piano to sound and func­tion as well as it looks.

Today, JoAnn from Kap­stan Piano Ser­vices came over to begin work­ing on it. Take a look at what she did:

All the stuff that had been on top of the piano. Goethe is in the mid­dle, and the birds are two of Hazletts pets that have been preserved.

Vir­ginia super­vis­es as JoAnn and docent Den­nis prep the area.

Detail of the side of the piano.

Under the hood.

The piano body after the key­board assem­bly was removed.

Key­board assembly

Work is going to con­tin­ue into next week. Stay tuned (get it?!) for more pic­tures and hope­ful­ly video of the piano in action!