Only the second year of short posts for Christmas week and I’m already breaking my own rules. I had intended these posts to cover subjects where there wasn’t much to say or where we only had a few pictures. But this one is purely because I don’t have time to write a long post about the pictures of Estella Canziani. I can come back to her in the new year and try to give you a fuller picture of a Kensington resident whose first memory was being held up by her nursemaid to see Queen Victoria pass by in a procession, and who lived until the mid 1960s.
Christmas for me is a time for being at home. So it’s appropriate that these pictures from our collection feature the house she lived in all her life in Palace Green.
I love this image of fiery plants glimpsed out of the back door from the corridor.
Estella had a particular liking for domestic interiors, and the garden outside.
(The family also kept pigeons.)
Trees in the garden can also be seen through the skylight in this view from the studio.
Below a picture I had to scan on our book scanner. Images copied this way are often a bit pale so I did some post production in Photoshop.
It restores the blue elements of the orginal, particularly Florence’s dress. Another brightly coloured dress is featured in this painting of a friend of Estella’s playing the piano.
We’ll come back to this Kensington house on another occasion and I can tell you how I identified a picture by Estella’s mother.
That’s the last of these short posts for Christmas week. I hope you had a good day and that your friends and family appreciated all the presents you gave them. The final soft toy Happy Christmas is from a group of animals.
The 12 monkeys of Christmas obviously.
And a happy new year to you all.
Next week, party season, there will be another visit to that perennial blog favourite the Duchess of Devonshire’s costume ball of 1897.
