Hunting and gathering the past

Walk through the doorway of Nancy Pacinelli’s modern colonial-style house and it’s as if you’ve stepped back in time by at least 100 years.

Displayed as part of the décor are wooden toolboxes and bullet molds, a tiny walnut containing an overview of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, stoneware crocks, a tin cheese mold, American flags, washboards of various sizes and tin containers, both large and small, covered with advertisements.

Pacinelli, AS ’71, of Wilmington, Del., has a passion for wood, 19th-century advertisements and the history of the everyday artifacts that once were common in American life. Every room of her home is decorated with this Americana that she has collected over the years.

She began collecting when she was an undergraduate history major at UD, but she says she has always had a feel for placing things in a visually pleasing way. Pacinelli believes her instinct for “collection” interior design comes from her interest in history and a lifelong love of art and painting. “Maybe it’s the artist in me that gives me a sense of aesthetics. A wall is like a blank canvas, and my collections are the paint. They are constantly changing and evolving,” she says.

She says she can envision how a collection can enhance space in a house. “I like to display and rearrange my collections and furniture and would love to do it for a living. There is not a room that could not be enhanced by a nice collection,” she says.

What catches her eye when she begins a new collection, she says, are the texture, tone, colors and shape of an item. For example, she has a large collection of bullet molds that she bought because of their “sculptural beauty.” Her fly swatter collection offers a mixture of colors, materials, shapes, handle lengths and advertisements, and the wooden bowls, trays and furniture display a rich variety of grains, finishes and tones.

There are hundreds of such items creatively displayed in the family room and in other areas of her house, and the house feels warm and alive with eye-catching mementos of the past. “I can always find a spot for something I love,” she says.

Pacinelli’s kitchen is a perfect example. Its walls are covered with 40 washboards of every size and shape—so many that they almost look like wallpaper. Even her window treatments incorporate her collections. In the family room, the curtains that she made accent her collection of more than 100 American flags, a table in the living room is covered by an antique quilt, and between the stair railing going upstairs to the bedrooms are Indian clubs, wooden weights shaped like bowling pins that were used as exercise equipment in the 19th century. (Even earlier, during the reign of Henry VIII, such pins were thrown at a stick or a dirt bowl during an outlawed game called “loggits.”)

She makes most of the fabric decorations that aren’t part of a collection, and when she bought two Shaker rocking chairs that needed to have the seats and backs replaced, she took classes and splinted the seats and backs herself.

“I have three grown sons who think I have a talent for displaying items and for furniture placement. They have called on me to help them arrange their homes,” she says.

Her eldest son, Matt, who works for a commercial developer in the Washington, D.C., area, noticed that some of the smaller steel reinforcing bars in a building his company was razing had large stars on their ends. He asked the demolition crew to

save them, and then he presented the stars to his mother as a gift. She has them displayed in the family room.

Pacinelli and her friend Gail Keller, CHEP ’71, started collecting when they were at UD. “We used to go to Hill’s Auction in Kemblesville, Pa.,” she says. “I have always felt a connection to old things and old houses.” Some of the items she collects have little monetary value, Pacinelli says, but she does it for the sheer joy of finding these pieces of history and making them part of her life.

Pacinelli’s Shaker pieces and her stoneware crock collection are her most valuable pieces. She says her greatest find was a wooden Shaker bucket for which she paid $35 at a house sale. “It was a real wooden Shaker bucket. It was just wonderful.”

For those who want to begin their own collections, Pacinelli says three of anything makes a collection and trios display better. “Once you’ve determined what you love looking at and having around you, go to shows that advertise these items,” she says. And, while she’s traveled as far as Tennessee and New Hampshire to find items, she says new collectors should start by going to local garage and tag sales. “There are books on everything and information on the Internet,” she points out.

She goes to antique shows, garage sales and shows that specialize in Americana. She also buys items online. Each August, she attends the Historic New Castle (Del.) Antique Show, where she participates as both a buyer and seller.

Pacinelli, just like the rest of America, is a fan of public television’s Antiques Road Show, and when it recently came to Philadelphia, she and her entire family tried to get her in. “There were 22,000 applications for 6,000 slots; I couldn’t get a ticket,” she says.

So deep is her passion for finding the beauty in everyday things that when Pacinelli found a humorous sign that said it all, she had to have it. She mounted it over the entrance to her family room. In part, it reads:

Warning: Antique Pox
Extremely contagious to all ages

Symptoms: Continued complaint as to need for fresh air, sunshine and relaxation. Patient has blank expression, sometimes deaf to mate and kids. Has no taste ofr work of any kind. Frequent checking of antique periodicals. Hangs out in all sorts of odd places. Makes secret phone calls. Mumbles to self. Lies to everytong.

Treament: Victim should attend as many antique sales and shops and possible.

–Barbara Garrison