Decorating with a memory

I spent most of my childhood looking at the gorgeous George Nelson Fan clock you see above. It hung in the children’s room at the Herrin City Library, where I spent a lot of time monitoring it to see how many minutes I had left to browse before I had to check out the books I wanted to read and run home.

The library expanded and redecorated several years ago. At some point recently, Mom either bought or was given this clock (I’m not sure of the details). Dad replaced the power cord in it, and Mom and Dad gave it to me. I picked it up last weekend, came straight home and happily took a hole saw to my freshly painted bedroom wall so I could run the cord between the studs and allow the clock to hang flush with the wall like it should.

It makes me happy every time I look up and see this piece of my childhood hanging on my bedroom wall. The library is the entire reason for my immense fondness for mid-century furniture. Like many public spaces of its era, it was decorated entirely with designs by Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson and their contemporaries. Mid-century furniture makes me feel safe and happy, the way I did when I was a little kid curled up on an Eames couch at the library with a book in my lap, and my biggest concern was keeping an eye on that Nelson clock so I wouldn’t get home late and be in trouble for making Mom worry.

When I build that tiny house in a few years, you can bet most of the furniture is going to be mid-century.

Emily