The Parlor Renders on YouTube

A short little video of Mayfair Witches house renderings...

The Mayfair Witches' Garden

The flowers are chicory, which is used in Café au lait for its added taste

Tulane University Libraries Special Collections

 A very brief update: The Parlor has added a new section to the Site Resources and Bibliography page.

Lasher Appears

Replacing an earlier video with some of my own family in it with this Mayfair Witches-related video to keep content Mayfair Witches-related, this is the first upload with the new AI feature requirement.

Afternoon In the Haunted Garden of the Mayfair Witches

The Parlor's Dammit Doll

The Mayfair Garden In 3D

Spring is approaching.  One thing I have wanted to do for a long time is do my best to recreate the Mayfair garden in 3D.   I've already built most of the structural elements, the "hardscape".  The pool patio, the balustrades, even the swimming pool...

The smaller buildings on the property appear as they do for the moment as placeholders for the actual buildings around the pool and patio area.  The cabana won't still look like this when I'm done:

This is before I made the patio feature the flagstones it actually does.  And before I added the remaining fountains.  

One thing I've wanted to do with a 3D model of the Mayfair house from the novels is to use the garden as a way of showing the types of flowers, shrubs, trees and other features that are described.   A fun way of identifying what grows there that might also appeal to garden enthusiasts.

The garden itself plays a major role in the stories of the Mayfair Witches.  There is Deirdre's Oak, which is also what marks the graves of (spoiler alert) and Emaleth.  The garden is what Deirdre Mayfair saw every day of her life for so many years, and up until she died.  The side porch is where Deirdre sat in her rocking chair, looking at who knows what and inspiring one local to refer to her as "a nice bunch of carrots". WH Ch 1

Nice.

The garden is where Michael Curry saw Lasher, and where Mona Mayfair found a trash can to use to get through a first floor window into the house to search for Michael.  But the area of the garden that really plays a role is the swimming pool.

It's hard to imagine what is, in reality and real life, a beautiful swimming pool being full of muck for decades and surviving.  I do not know when the actual pool was built on the property, but we can be reasonably sure it was not built by the original owner, Albert Hamilton Brevard.  

In The Witching Hour, the swimming pool was added by Stella Mayfair, whose party guests would often amuse themselves in it.  So, the pool was built in the 1920's, in the novel timeline.  Swimming pools actually scare me somewhat, but I also find them fascinating for some weird reason.

Imagining a swimming pool like this being emptied by shoveling out several decades' worth of muck and then restored is more than a little creepy, I think.  But fascinating.  And definitely a haunted swimming pool.

Michael Curry, during the restoration of the house, decided he'd take a dip one night when he was alone at the house.  And promptly found himself looking at a scene from the past, something that might have been either a time slip or a residual type of haunting.  Seeing a ghostly replay of Stella Mayfair's Roaring Twenties party could certainly be called residual.

But the ghost of Arthur Langtry of the Talamasca, who also died in 1929, standing at one end of the pool and urging Michael to "Come away from there, man!" certainly isn't residual.

Haunted or not, a swimming pool like this in the middle of a garden full of lush, flowering plants would certainly be an enchanting, magical sight to behold.  Hopefully, I can achieve this effect, or come very close.

Speaking of the ghostly replay and the ghost of Arthur Langtry, here is a tidbit from Season 1 of Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches that jumped out at me.  I don't believe I've gone into this much, but why not?

When Rowan was trapped in the Mayfair house after Deirdre's funeral and Carlotta's attempt to burn the house down, she had quite an odyssey.  She and Ciprien Grieve.  Ciprien Grieve found himself making the acquaintance of a man named Stuart Townsend.  And Stuart Townsend had some advice for Ciprien Grieve.

Don't die in the house.

Those who have read The Witching Hour will probably know who Stuart Townsend is.  He was indeed in the novels.  For those who don't know or might not remember, Stuart Townsend also belonged to the Talamasca.  Stella Mayfair was aware of the order, and even had a little fun with them when signing a photograph of herself for them.

By 1929, the sibling rivalry between Stella, the Designee, and Carlotta, the older sister who was originally the Designee until their mother, Mary Beth Mayfair, decided it would be Stella, instead.  Mary Beth Mayfair had died of cancer in 1925, and the relations between the siblings deteriorated alarmingly.

Stella had wanted to get away from her family, and apparently had hoped Stuart Townsend, who had fallen in love with Stella, would help her.  Well, Carlotta did not like that, and the brother, Lionel, was jealous as well.  What happened?  Carlotta tricked Lasher and provoked Lionel into shooting Stella in the double parlor from the main staircase.

Unfortunately, Stella's 8-year-old daughter Antha saw her mother shot to death.

Arthur Langtry was also in the Mayfair house when Stella was killed.  Actually, A LOT of people were in the Mayfair house when Stella was killed.  Because it happened during what would turn out to be her last wild, Roaring Twenties party.  

Langtry was able to leave the Mayfair house to head home, but died on the ship he was traveling on.  Stuart Townsend?

Well, he went "missing".

Kinda.

See, he never left the Mayfair house after Stella was killed.  And he wouldn't leave it for another sixty years.  That was when Stella's great-granddaughter Rowan realized there was a reason that rolled up carpet on the third floor looked funny.

Some of this might sound familiar to those who recall Season 1--except it was Deirdre who was the murder victim rather than Stella (so far).  In the book, Lionel, the actual shooter, was taken to a psychiatric hospital and died soon after, thanks to Lasher tormenting him.  

All of this activity appears to have also caused the haunting to include the swimming pool.  Those familiar with the novels will no doubt recall that when Michael came home and found Lasher "in the flesh", the two of them fought, and Michael ended up drowning and being brought back--again--in the swimming pool.  

No matter how trivial a detail might seem on the face, Anne Rice had a way of integrating it into the stories in the novels she wrote.  Every single thing described about the Mayfair house and all of the items in it has a purpose to the rest of the tale.  While a haunting, blue-green ambience and the sight of moss dripping from branches, descriptions of the china, silver, and crystal found in the butler's pantry and other things might seem pointless on the face, they're not.  Even those things are telling the story. 

It might be more accurate to say it was Lasher, rather than Carlotta, who stopped time at the Mayfair house since 1929.

I'm pretty anxious to finally be at the point where I'm ready to start adding the flowers to the garden...

The Mayfair House--A 3D Update

I thought it was time I provided an update on my project, a 3D model of the Mayfair house on First Street.  There are some details I've added, some obvious, some not so obvious.  This update shows only part of the first floor, and there are certainly details I've not gotten to yet.  One is that there appears to be a door or window on the end of the butler's pantry that faces the pool and patio area of the garden.

The Pink Room: The Master Bedroom

This is REALLY pink everywhere!  Hopefully, I will soon be able to reduce the amount of pink in the master bedroom.  In the meantime, this is the first room on the second floor I've worked on.  Quite a lot of progress on the room has been made already...

For Your Viewing Pleasure...

 Throughout the Parlor, there are videos embedded on pages according to topic.  These videos are on YouTube, as well.  There are also some playlists and videos from other platforms like Vimeo and Behance.  It's pretty amazing how hard it can be to tell what the video's screen resolution, bit rate and stuff is, but many of the Parlor's videos are much larger than what you'd see on YouTube's player.

A (Belated) Mayfair Christmas Dinner In 3D

If you read the description of the video, you will see that this particular video is now the single most difficult I have ever made.  Not because Christmas dinners make me cry (they don't), but because of numerous problems with software, which still gave me grief even AFTER I upgraded it. 

Now, I understand that now that it's upgraded, there are some more things it is now capable of doing.  Well, that's good, because the next thing I'm gonna work on is my Dammit Doll, and I'm gonna animate it and it's gonna look great being banged on something somewhere in the 3D house--

Anyway.

Before sitting down at the table, please give your cellphones to Tante Oscar, and she'll put 'em in the fridge for ya.  Bring it to the table, and someone gave that kid over there a remote control F14 fighter with little bitty projectiles and all and it's got this remote control so I'm borrowing it in case--

Oops!  

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, and wishing you all a happy New Year!

A Wee Bit of a 3D Mayfair Witches House Update Teaser

The Parlor has been pretty busy with a lot of things, but aren't we all at this time of year?  Not all of it has been good, though, so having something to escape with means my 3D model project of the Mayfair house--1239 First Street in New Orleans--has come a long way.

This is a tiny little teaser, but also to get you thinking about the character of Lasher.  What are his true intentions for the Mayfair Witches?  Why is Christmas so central to Lasher's history and his plans?  And how is that going to play out in Season 2 of AMC's Mayfair Witches when there wasn't any mention of Christmas to any real extent in Season 1?

Michael Curry's love of Christmas really stands out in The Witching Hour.  His memories of Christmas as a child, and his later love of the holiday led to his collecting an assortment of beautiful Christmas ornaments.  When he went back to San Francisco briefly to close up his house and business and ship some of his belongings to New Orleans, among those belongings were some boxes of the Christmas ornaments he'd collected.  He was thrilled to finally be able to have a Christmas tree large enough to display all of these treasures.

This is partly what inspired me to include a version of the Mayfair house that is a Christmas version.  Like the model of the house itself, the Christmas version is by no means finished, but I'm tucking in a few little surprises here and there.

Something else, as long as I'm on the subject of San Francisco: Rowan and Michael relocated just in time in The Witching Hour.  The novel's present-day time is 1989, and San Francisco had the major earthquake in October of that year.  Looking at photos of the area where Michael's house was set in, if he were an actual person, he'd be bleepin' lucky his house managed to escape with what sounds like comparatively minor damage.  Like the roof leak.

At some point, I want to resume exploring Michael's love of Victoriana.  Some things I'm trying to update at the time of year those things are relevant.  In the meantime, I've been looking at other things that could stand to be updated and added on to.  Even things as seemingly insignificant as bits of tradition and cultural heritage unique to New Orleans, seen in creative ways.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, here.  This is a very brief teaser as we get closer to Christmas...

Progress on the Parlor 3D Model of 1239 First Street For Christmas!

Have a look...

The Mayfair Witches Dining Room

As Thanksgiving is near, I thought I would put together an update on the 3D model of the Mayfair house at 1239 First Street focusing on the dining room.  The actual dining room has a panoramic mural that continues along the walls, and in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches, this mural is described as being that of Riverbend Plantation.  This plantation is where the Mayfair Witches settled upon their arrival in Louisiana after having fled Saint-Domingue on the eve of the Haitian Revolution.

Replicating such a mural turned out to be just about impossible, so instead, I found a panorama of a Louisiana bayou.  For some reason, this just made the room "feel" more like the Mayfair Witches' dining room.  In the dining hutch, which is from the 3D model of the Addams house by Demilune, instead of a mirror, I found a rendering of Belle Grove Plantation, which was located in Iberville Parish, Louisiana.  

This is not the dining room of the AMC series, but I did manage to tuck in some of the pomegranate patterned wallpaper in the butlers' pantry, which you get a brief glimpse of.  However, I did put up some framed Mayfair Witches' portraits in this dining room.

The place settings, the dishes and the displays are inspired by Rowan and Michael's exploration of the Mayfair house the day after Deirdre Mayfair's funeral.  I've always loved that tour they took.  Then, there are the candles...

Happy Halloween! A Parlor Special...

Happy Halloween!

This is perhaps the only time of year I feel is appropriate for unveiling this particular 3D model of mine.  It is the Mayfair tomb, which is set to be located in Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans.

Here is each Mayfair Witch at her crypt, which for a number of them would only be cenotaphs.  Respects can still be paid though.

Let's have a look at the mystery of the doorway and the thirteen...

You can also see this video on the Come Into My Parlor In 3D page of the Parlor

New Orleans: Colonel Short's Villa

 

I have made what has turned out to be a very interesting addition to Exploring New Orleans Architecture.  The styles that have become such an iconic part of New Orleans can have some interesting differences among the structures they are found on.  One example is the ironwork.  

Usually, I'm used to seeing ornate floral patterns and fleur de lis, but one house has expressed its individuality in a pretty detailed way.  From the image above, you have probably guessed that I'm talking about Colonel Short's Villa, also widely known as the "Cornstalk Fence House".

Built in 1859 for Colonel Robert Short, the house was designed by Henry Howard, who also designed the mansions at Nottoway and Belle Grove plantations in Iberville Parish, Louisiana.  Its history includes being confiscated and used as the executive mansion of the federal governor during the Civil War.  Colonel Short's home was returned to him following the war, and he lived out the rest of his life there.

Like any other home of this description in New Orleans, renovation and restoration has become necessary over the whole of its existence.  It underwent a 10 year renovation started by the owners who had purchased the house in 1994.  They would later sell the house, and as of 2021, the house was owned by manager and producer Scott Rodger.

The difference in the appearance of the parlor between 2016 and 2021 is so different that I just HAD to show the difference.  Just from what I have found so far, it reminded me that I've been meaning to dig deeper into the history of the Garden District and the splitting into contracts land now formerly belonging to Livaudais Plantation.

Henry Howard was the architect to design Colonel Short's Villa, and, as stated, both Nottoway and Belle Grove plantation mansions in Iberville Parish.  One thing stands out when it comes to Belle Grove, however.  There is mention here and there that a second architect might also have been involved in the design of Belle Grove--James Gallier, the man whose house still stands in the French Quarter today and was used as Lestat's townhouse in the AMC series, Interview With the Vampire...

Which is interesting considering what the interior of the Cornstalk Fence House looked like as of 2021...

If you love the image above (I know I do!), you can see it and more by Alexey Sergeev on his website.

3D Model Goes Inside First Street

 

I am all kinds of excited!  I've finally gotten to a point in the project where I can provide a major update on its progress!  Much more detail has been added to the 3D model of 1239 First Street.

Now, this model is by no means finished.  I have focused a lot on structural details, like the crown mouldings, baseboards, porches, etc.  It's tough to get plain old paint to look right in a house like this, and I cannot imagine how I am going to somehow get the dining room walls to feature the murals (or any murals) the actual house has.  

Not only is the scale of the house quite massive, but the staircase is a lot more narrow and steep than what you would find in houses built in our lifetimes.  The cornices have also been quite a challenge and those are definitely not done yet!

You will see wallpaper in the rooms shown.  You might even recognize some of the wallpaper used.  One Mayfair Witches fan managed to find samples of the wallpaper used for the interior of the Mayfair house in the AMC series.  The dining room is one of those rooms.  If I can't figure out how to get a mural onto the walls in that room, I'll use the wallpaper sample that most closely shows the colors of the mural.  I'll also put the portraits of the Mayfair Witches on the dining room walls as well.  Some are already there.

They might not have the same frames in the finished version that they do now, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

One other thing from the AMC series is one of the photographs Rowan finds in Ciprien's cellphone.  On closer inspection, it is clearly of one of Stella's Roaring Twenties parties.  Photos like this were also mentioned in The Witching Hour, so I've included it here as well. 

In this update, I focused a lot on displaying smaller 3D models inspired by the novels and/or items from the novels.  You will also see one of the maps from The Witches' Companion by Katherine Ramsland displayed in the model.  

I love a good Easter egg, and this 3D model will be no different.  Very, very briefly (for now) are glimpses of a portrait of a woman in the double parlor.  This portrait is from the real life history of 1239 First Street, a portrait of Pamela Starr Clapp.  Her husband, Emory Clapp, bought the house for her as a wedding gift from Elizabeth Brevard, the daughter of the original owner, Albert Hamilton Brevard.  If I recall, Pamela Starr Clapp, who lived in the house from 1869 to her death in 1934, loved her home.  And...she is rumored to haunt the house, probably to this day.

So, I wanted to include a portrait of her in the model as well.  

Are there pictures of Anne Rice in the model?

Does a bear sh--yes, there is one, so far.  The one on the wall is one of my favorites of her.  I do want to include more, though.  Because all of this came from her, and I want the model to ultimately showcase and celebrate what she created.

In The Witching Hour, Rowan Mayfair set about having a "state of the art" phone system installed due to the house being so big.  Phones are phones, but should I reach a point where I do add the kitchen, there is one contribution that must be made.  

The phone in the kitchen will be found in the refrigerator. 

To view the short video, you may go to Come Into My Parlor In 3D or you may view it on the Parlor's YouTube channel...

Le Musée de f.p.c.

One of the things I'd like to do with the 3D model of 1239 First Street is to display items made from the descriptions of them in Anne Rice's novels.  I've already added the first of the framed portraits used for cover art, such as the painting on the cover of Blood Canticle.  The cameos from the front and back of the dust jacket of Blackwood Farm appear in GIF images on the Parlor.  Of course, the Mayfair Emerald was made from descriptions of it in The Witching Hour, and now, I have been working on a model of the emerald key featured in the AMC series.

One branch of the Mayfairs is unique, though.  The branch of Merrick Mayfair.  

"The Snake Charmer" by Henri Rousseau (1907) Marian Goodman Gallery

The dust jacket's artwork, "The Snake Charmer" by Henri Rousseau, is something I'd like to feature in the model, but there are a lot of other things in Merrick that I think would be fascinating to display as well.  Early in the novel, when Merrick met David Talbot and Aaron Lightner, she talked about her connection to the white Mayfairs of the Garden District.  This connection, she said, was through Oncle Julien (of course).  The other was another Mayfair who was already a Free Person of Color, even though she was also a Mayfair--Angelique Marybelle Mayfair.  This Mayfair ancestor was also the aunt of Oncle Julien (again, of course).

Of course, this would not be the same Angelique Mayfair who was the fifth Mayfair Witch, born in 1725.  This Mayfair Witch was the great-grandmother of Oncle Julien.  So no, not the same Angelique Mayfair!

What brought on the mention of Angelique Marybelle Mayfair was the collection of old photographs Merrick had collected of her ancestors.  The oldest in Merrick's collection was indeed of Angelique Marybelle Mayfair, a formal posed portrait with hair parted neatly in the middle, a shawl typical of the period and a pair of spectacles and a folded fan in her hands.  This led me to see what I could find on formal portraits of the Free People of Color.  

The idea is to see if I can create graphics of these old photographs in Merrick's collection by their descriptions in the novels.  Amazingly, I have found that there are indeed old photographs and portraits of the Free People of Color that have survived. 

Le Musée de f.p.c.

Very quickly, I found that in New Orleans is a museum dedicated to preserving the history of the Free People of Color.  Le Musée de f.p.c. is, from the photos on their website and in articles on the museum, full of photographs and portraits of these people, along with other preserved artifacts.  

The museum at 2336 Esplanade Avenue is housed in yet another house similar to the Brevard Rice house.  Images of the house show a lot of smaller details that are astonishing.  So, what to do?

2336 Esplanade Avenue, New Orleans, LA

I've added a new section to the Exploring New Orleans Architecture page on the Parlor.  This section gives an overview and images of the house. Some of the details, both similar and different, are pointed out.  Of course, there are links to the official website of Le Musée de f.p.c. and an excellent article on NOLA.com about the museum.

Going back to Merrick Mayfair herself, although she did not have any association with her relatives in the Garden District, she was aware of them.  Despite this, she continued to live in the same house she had grown up in, a house very different from 1239 First Street.  

On the face, the Mayfairs in the Garden District and Merrick's Mayfair line appear very different from one another.  And in many ways, they are.  However, there are other smaller details that tend to create small but significant links to details of a shared history.  It's a bit like comparing the French Creole manor houses of the sugar plantations on Saint-Domingue to the later plantation mansions built in Louisiana and the South after the Haitian Revolution.  

Or that Haitian Voodoo seems to have survived down Merrick Mayfair's line while Stella Mayfair had by some accounts been a practitioner of New Orleans Voodoo.  Merrick's collection of old photographs and her ancestors having been Free People of Color tends to hint at The Feast of All Saints.

Hmmm...

The Parlor Has Some Goodies and an IWtV Season 2 Update...

The Parlor has been hard at work with building the 3D model of 1239 First Street!  Not only is it to help bring the world of the Mayfair Witches "to life", so to speak, the hobby itself can be calming when world events are in a state of total horror and chaos.  Very soon, I intend to make some brief videos of the model to show the details, but I'll give a few brief teasers here...

The painting is the one used on the first edition cover of Blood Canticle

The first edition of The Witching Hour had a drawing of 1239 First Street on the title page

A model of the coffee cup from Knives Out (2019).  I should make a New Orleans themed version...

For Interview With the Vampire fans, here is a video clip from AMC+'s YouTube channel:

One More Double Parlor Detail...

...the baseboards.

Details of the Double Parlor

 I was looking at the photos of the double parlor at 1239 First Street that had been taken in the 1930s and in 1964 earlier.  Every detail I focus on says even more that houses like this one are unique.  Even though they're something of an architectural polyglot.  Even the fireplaces are interesting!

Some of the fireplaces in the house were described in The Witching Hour as having been fitted for gas.  The ones in the double parlor seem to have been coal burning fireplaces.  In the picture from 1964, there is what looks like a coal bin by one of the two fireplaces.  And it showed how it is that one can have a working fireplace right next to a tall window with very elegant drapes RIGHT next to it.

The walls sticks out a bit.  Oops.  Fixed that.

I managed to get the crown mouldings around the wall that extends out a bit for the fireplace.  More specifically, the chimney behind the wall.  I took out the wood and flames as these fireplaces don't seem to be for burning wood.  If I'm not mistaken, the fireboxes would be a lot bigger than they are.

Creating the arch that partitions this long, cavernous room into two sides, hence the name "double parlor", has been something of a challenge.  This, too, is ornate, and upon closer inspection, one detail goes even further to make this arch somehow divide the room is the fact that the crown mouldings run along both sides of the arch.  

Like this:

Look in the top right corner of the image above.

I've added a chandelier as a sort of place holder, but the actual chandeliers and medallions are larger than the ones you see in the model so far.  Finding mirrors massive enough was another challenge, but hopefully, I can modify these or make mirrors that will be closer to the ones in the actual house.

The mirrors seem to be part of the house, since they seem to have remained in it despite the house having had several owners over the course of its existence.  They make me think of the "white ballroom" at Nottoway Plantation.  As I understand it, John Randolph had had the ballroom painted white so that, like a modern art gallery, the colorful gowns he anticipated his daughters wearing to what sounds like a debutant ball would be more obvious and dazzling.  

The mirrors were so that his daughters and/or other guests could discreetly check themselves to make sure nothing was out of place and they didn't look ridiculous.  Obviously, this house is a townhouse in the Garden District, but looking closely at old photos of the double parlor tends to say a lot about the function of the room.

One can see a couch and chairs around a coffee table in one corner of the room, and a small table and chairs at another part of the room.  There is what could possibly be a writing desk, a shelf for displaying knick knacks...  For the Mayfairs, one end of the room would have a Bösendorfer piano.

Just reading accounts of Stella Mayfair's Roaring Twenties parties, and Rowan and Michael's wedding reception sixty years later both being held in the same double parlor says this is a room meant for entertaining.  With that many people coming and going, it makes sense for those massive sash windows to also function as doors if necessary.  

As I was looking at the pictures of the double parlor from the 1930s, I decided I wanted to really look closely at the pictures to see what sorts of items had been in the room.  And where.

There seems to have been furniture arrangements like the more orderly photos from 1964, but I got the impression that the room hadn't really been used much by the time the pictures were taken in the 1930s.  I could be wrong, but it looked to me like there was something of a hoard of things just set in the room and left wherever they were thumped down first.  Looking at the history of the house, the pictures would have been taken at or about the time Pamela Clapp passed away (1934).

Her husband, Emory Clapp, had purchased the house for her as a wedding gift around 1869.  He had bought it from Elizabeth Brevard, the daughter of Albert Hamilton Brevard, who was the original owner.  Emory Clapp died around 1884, and Pamela, who apparently loved her home, remained in it until her own death decades later.  Considering her advanced age at the time of her death, I can see how she might not have been able to manage the house as she once had.  

If you look at the image of the double parlor taken from the entrance closest to the front door in 1964, look carefully at the picture on the wall.  The one by the fireplace.  There is something very interesting that I had never realized was there before.  It looks like it might be a portrait of a woman standing beside what looks like that same fireplace the portrait hangs next to.

Pictures like this are excellent for giving us a better idea of the scale and proportion of the house.  Anyone know if this is a picture taken in 1239 First Street's double parlor?