Getting to Know Dr. Victor Ravensmark Part 1

The vague and mysterious Dr. Victor Ravensmark is as vague and mysterious as his pseudonym. Dr. Ravensmark is a fan of the Victorian era, especially post-1870s American Victorian. Since part of Bryony takes place in upper Michigan in the early 1890s, Dr. Ravensmark kindly agreed to occasionally share some of his knowledge of the time period.

For the next three Tuesdays, Dr. Ravensmark will share how and why his Victorian interest began and grew.

1) Were you always drawn to the Victorian age?

“Our interest (my wife and I) started back in the early 1980s in Chicago where some friends of ours were antique dealers. They were a brother and sister team that collected and sold glassware and pottery made in the early to mid 20th century, along with anything else that caught their attention. They were very resourceful on their hunts.”


2) How did that affect you?

“We would go with them on occasion to garage sales, flea markets, auctions, and antique malls—anywhere that might have what they collected for sale at bargain prices (something like ‘American Pickers’ TV program on the History channel—see http://www.history.com/shows/American-pickers—but in and around the city of Chicago). I was only mildly interested in the things they collected, but I began to develop an interest in the Victorian furniture we would often see.”


3) Why furniture?

“Some of it was beautiful—solid walnut dressers with machined lines and carvings and ornamentations on top panels that made the piece over eight feet high, marble table tops with curved molded aprons and applied rosettes, balloon backed chairs with carved floral crests—where did this stuff come from? Who made it? With a little research, I found a lot of what I was seeing was made in the 1870s through about 1910. The walnut furniture that I liked was mostly from the 1870s and 1880s.”