In the center of the room is a bronze chandelier with six chain festoons and six branches in grape-vine
design.
This was originally a gasolier from the Henry N. Hooper Co. of Boston, made around 1850 and installed in
1853.
Chandelier detail
Books by French poets
The bookcases hold many of Henry Longfellow's foreign-language books:
the nineteenth-century French poets in elaborate gold-tooled bindings, the Italian poets in white vellum,
and the German poets in green leather.
Books by Italian poets
Library, 1900
On a bracket above the mantel is a Louis XIV pendule (shelf clock)
made in Paris in 1745 in a Boule-work case with ormolu mounts of masks, leaf scrolls, and cornucopias, and
the figure of a seated child above. In 2002, the clock was cleaned and restored.
Library clock over mantel
Six-panel Japanese screen
Ink and tempera painting on buff paper
Signed by Kano Moritsune
This Japanese screen was recently restored and placed in the
library. It depicts a boatman navigating through a spring landscape with hills, flowering trees, and a temple
in the background.
Mary King Longfellow's painting shows a Japanese screen in this corner of the library in 1876.
Longfellow Library
by Mary King Longfellow, 1876
Corner chair
The Chippendale corner chair was made in New England between 1760 and 1795.
Next to the fireplace is a tilt-top Japanese tea table from the third quarter of the nineteenth century.
The black lacquer tilt-top table has gilt designs with oriental characters and was acquired by Charley Longfellow.
Tilt-top table
Library table
The oak Elizabethan Revival library table with green baize panel
stands in the center of the room. It was purchased by the Longfellows in the 1850s.
Étagère
The Renaissance Revival étagère was brought from Paris
by Fanny Longfellow's brother, Thomas Gold Appleton, in 1848.
Furnishings
