Its mother’s day today and also the anniversary of our mama’s death in March 1997. She was the first and foremost dalzell salvage sister and the inspiration for much of our activity on this blog. Our first ever blog post in May 2010 was this newspaper article below from the 1970’s, detailing some of her projects at Tullyroan House. Since then i think we have gained a wider readership so i am posting it here again as an homage to her talents which wisely taught us (begrudgingly at the time) the ways of the salvaging underground! I recall countless trips as children to old junk yards and antique shops. One in particular always seems to stick in my mind which was The Hole In The Wall in Armagh. I used to hate going to that dank cellar which had a musty stench and seemed every week to feature a collection of odd people skulking quietly around, handling all the ‘rubbish’ laid out on tables and creaky shelves. I used to try and interest myself in the books but they all were about ancient queens, local geography, or old maps, of no interest to an 8 year old. Of course that is exactly the kind of place i myself now love to frequent. The smellier the better, in fact. Then there was Hueys in Loughgall, and an old worn-out stately home somewhere off the M1, with several floors of antique furniture.
Mum was notorious for re-arranging furniture. Not only was there mounds of it to move around but as there was a lot of space in Tullyroan, things frequently got carted off to different rooms, or just a simple re-organisation room-by-room. It wasn’t uncommon to disappear off from a task and come back shortly afterwards to find the sofa you were sitting on located on the other side of the room, or 3 inches from the fire. So as young girls we thought nothing of taking a sofa between us and transporting it to various trial venues under her tutelage.
It seems fitting to speak of all this now as Ryan and Marianne put the finishing touches just this month to their very own version of Tullyroan House after a 3 year arduous salvage project of epic proportions. One day we will get a blog post detailing it all on here i hope!
The rendition of the article isn’t great but if you can zoom in or pull out your magnifying glass you will read about Chesterfields, french polishing, auctions, bedspreads, crocheted blankets and other such topics familiar to any reader of our own blog. I chuckled to read the phrase about auction ‘finds’ – still a term widely in use in the business but more recently attached to the word ‘vintage’.
If you knew her, what memories or stories of mum’s salvaging might you have?
