MANSION ON O STREET

On our recent trip to the Washington DC area to see our daughter, we visited an unusual attraction, The Mansion on O Street, located near DuPont Circle.  The facility serves, inter alia, as boutique hotel, eating place, museum, and high-end flea market.  It consists of a number of contiguous multi-story brownstones that have been furnished (way over-furnished, really) with a conglomeration of stuff, ranging from the antique to the kitsch. Most of the items are for sale and many of the suites are for rent.  The brownstones have been connected by a series of "secret" passages that are part of the fun of exploring the place.

As stated, the spaces are very much over-furnished, but that just provides more opportunities for taking photos.  Here are a couple of wider-angle shots to give a feel for that feature.

As a photographer, I had fun just sorting through the various photo opportunities that the thousands of items presented.  The following item appears on the right side in the first photo above.

The shot below is of a portion of a glass engraving.

One suite was dedicated to John Lennon memorabilia, including this large (maybe four feet across) glass piece of John and Yoko.

Most of the items were for sale, and frankly the prices didn't seem exorbitant.

Among the items not for sale were a large number of guitars that had been signed personally by various artists.  Here are a couple of examples.

This latter guitar was signed by, among others, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Buddy Guy, and Neil Young.

Among the kitschy items, Betty Boop . . .

Johnny Depp (poster, that is) . . .

And a pink flamingo.

Here is a shot of a very unusual brass chess set.  I really could not do justice to the set as a whole, so I decided to convert it into an opportunity in abstraction.  The pieces ranged from perhaps 6 inches to over a foot high.

The collection included also a large number of ladies' hats that were posed on manikin heads.

Most of the time, we are admonished to focus on the subject's eyes.  But here I thought the distinguishing features were the lips.

Many of the bathrooms were decorated just as eccentrically as the other rooms.  For example . . .

Finally, here is a door that featured a cut-glass panel that I liked.

This was a fun experience, especially as our trip coincided with the government shutdown, requiring us to rethink the venues we might want to visit during our stay.

John