Softening Gifts
When I invite colleagues home, the line between private and public life further blurs. West Coast editor and frequent contributor Brian Coleman comes to mind; ironically, he has softened my masculine house with his gifts of vintage textiles.
A Note from the Editor:
I’ve been haphazard about keeping a diary. The family photo albums are not up to date. And I wake at 3 A.M. sure I can hear the deafening rumble of life’s swift current, the boys already about their separate lives. Too fast, and no record! Yet my life was chronicled, more or less, in the editor’s pages I wrote for Old-House Journal, Old-House Interiors, and Arts & Crafts Homes. Reading these brief missives, I relive renovation and divorce, partnerships and child rearing, project launches and friendships. It seems I have kept a diary, of sorts, after all!
Over the years, readers have had to put up with my stories of plumbing catastrophes and swing sets taking priority over new gutters. That interface between the personal and professional extends to my home, the result of multiple restoration pushes. Here I watch the battle between aesthetics (my professional self has an over-developed sensitivity to color and clutter) and, say, piles of laundry. I haven’t ordered fabric for curtains because the living room is in flux—play room, music room, only place for the Christmas tree.
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When I invite colleagues home, the line between private and public further blurs. West Coast editor and frequent contributor Brian Coleman comes to mind; ironically, he has softened my masculine house with his gifts of vintage textiles. I think this is the difference I see between old houses, the bungalows and Foursquares and Tudors ca. 1890–1930, and the newly built Revival houses. The old ones have curtains.
Patricia Poore,Editor
ppoore@homebuyerpubs.com
10 Harbor Rd., Gloucester, MA 01930
Patricia Poore is Editor-in-chief of Old House Journal and Arts & Crafts Homes, as well as editorial director at Active Interest Media’s Home Group, overseeing New Old House, Traditional Building, and special-interest publications.
Poore joined Old House Journal when it was a Brooklyn-brownstoner newsletter in the late 1970s. She became owner and publisher and, except for the years 2002–2013, has been its editor. Poore founded the magazines Old-House Interiors (1995–2013) and Early Homes (2004–2017); their content is now available online and folded into Old-House Journal’s wider coverage. Poore also created GARBAGE magazine (1989–1994), the first unaffiliated environmental consumer magazine.
Poore has participated, hands-on, in several restorations, including her own homes: a 1911 brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and a 1904 Tudor–Shingle Style house in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she brought up her boys and their wonderful dogs.
