A Hutch, Dressed for Fall

So much of the charm of an old house comes from the original details that have survived. Ours was built in 1900, and when we first saw it, it needed plenty of imagination, but it also had soaring ceilings, pocket doors, and a beautiful built in hutch in the dining room. Those were the kinds of things that made us fall in love with it.

I filled the hutch with things I loved almost as soon as we moved in, but over the years I never quite got around to making it shine in the way I felt it should. It had plenty of beautiful things, but somehow the shelves always felt a little dark and cluttered, and the things themselves seemed to get lost inside.

I knew it needed something. Over the years I considered painting the back, adding wallpaper, or finding some way to light the shelves, but in an old house there always seemed to be another project waiting. The hutch kept getting pushed down the list.

A couple of months ago, the hutch finally had its turn. And, after years of imagining paint colors and more elaborate fixes, what transformed it turned out to be remarkably simple. I took things out, gave what remained a little breathing room, and added light.

The lights are nothing elaborate. Just small LED lights tucked along the back of the cabinet, but they changed everything. Suddenly the crystal caught the light, the colored glass glowed, and with a little more space around everything I could finally see the individual pieces again.

Once the shelves had some room to breathe, I found myself drawn to the glass pumpkins. I’ve always loved them, but with fewer things competing for attention and light finally moving through all that colored glass, they suddenly seemed to come alive. So I began spacing them throughout the hutch, letting each one have its own little moment.

The pumpkins are particularly special because my family made them. We took a glassblowing class together and (with plenty of help from people who knew what they were doing) we each made our own. They’re all a little different in shape and color, and each one seems to have its own personality.

I love the pumpkins at other times of year too. The colors, the glass, the slightly whimsical quality of them. Maybe it’s also that they bring a little bit of the garden indoors, only transformed into something luminous and jewel like. But September seems to cast a little spell over them. They are pumpkins after all. Suddenly a blue glass pumpkin tucked among the crystal or a tiny orange one beside a larger green one feels unmistakably like fall. And with lights glowing behind them, the whole hutch begins to feel like a jewel box.

The pumpkins share the shelves with other things I’ve collected over the years: old plates, little treasures from travels, and pieces I’ve kept simply because I found them charming.The clover pitcher is one of those. My sister and I found it while wondering through Dublin, and every time I see it, I’m reminded of that trip. Collected over time, all the different things in the cabinet seem quite happy together.

Maybe that’s why simply taking things away worked better than expected. I didn’t want the hutch to look styled so much as I wanted to be able to see and enjoy the things I already loved. Giving them a little space and a little light, was enough.

The hutch is pretty during the day , but I think I love it most in the evening. As the room gets darker, the lights begin to glow against the glass. The crystal sparkles, the colors in the pumpkin deepen, and the whole cabinet takes on that slightly magical quality I was hoping for all along.

I hadn’t really set out to make a fall hutch. I had simply wanted this old cabinet to finally shine. Somehow, once it did, it seemed the hutch had been waiting for September a ll along.