Story of Mr. and Mrs. Fu

Do you see what I see?

Source: House Beautiful

There are lots of similarities, but I was immediately drawn to the old Chinese paintings. A Chinese friend told me long that in China people used to commission artists to get their ancestors painted and hang them in a temple for good luck. So I guess they are antiques.

Let me introduce Mr. and Mrs. Fu waiting patiently in my closet to be framed.

Aren't they cute? It is one of many possessions from Craigslist that I had to have at the moment but ended up in our garage or closet. It's not because I don't like them. In fact, I adore them. They are such an intricate realistic painting but the frames are kind of ugly. Plus the paintings pressed against the glass for a long time so it was going to hurt the painting eventually if it hasn't already. I say they deserve better.

The seller of these paintings was a local business man who's moving to Thailand to get remarried and  had lots of interesting stories to tell about the process (but that's for another posting). He told me it is from an antique store in Hawaii that his ex-wife used to own many many years ago. I brought them home and found a corner of the frame's paint was peeling.  Hubby said let's just hang them. I said no I want to make them look better. So I started "making improvements" and scraping off the finish from the frame and that's how they disappeared in the closet. You can see I deliberately cropped their frames. 

Now I have some inspiration from these living rooms (don't worry honey, I'm not redoing our living room) and know I need to bite the bullet and re-frame them. Hopefully Mr. and Mrs. Fu will be able see daylight soon and who knows, it might bring me some good luck. Ha ha

Posted in: My house