A Find Re-purposed…
We like to salvage and re-purpose. In days gone by, before widespread automation, so much work went into making, well, everything! So if we can take one of those old items, and preserve it, either for continued use, for a new purpose, or even for decor, we are happy to do so.
As we have remodeled our house over the years, we have found very few “keepsakes”. Our house was most likely a mine house, moved from a defunct mining town into the community where we live. Thus, it was a simple house and didn’t have any ‘fine’ finishes or great finds.
Diorama by a great local artist depicting what some of the mine houses looked like. The houses on this block are very similar to ours. Source: wyomingtalesandtrails.com
One thing we did find in the attic (along with many buckets catching rain from a hole in the roof!) was an old suitcase full of player piano music rolls in their boxes. Player piano rolls are a thin paper with a pattern of holes in them that created the song. Each roll was in a box that was labeled on the end with the song it held. Unfortunately, age, mice and water damage had ruined most of the rolls.
Source: via Pinterest (mamiejanes.blogspot.com)
But as usual, we found it very difficult to just throw them away. So we made something that has hung on our wall since. Daddy made two frames and stained them to match our old upright piano. He then covered two pieces of cardboard with strips of the piano roll paper, and arranged the ends of the boxes on them. There were also some “Instructions For Playing This Roll” that we included in the collages as well.
We were very pleased with how they turned out and it is fun to imagine the songs playing on an old piano… “Romanze”….”Charme de Amour”…”Rainbow Isle”…