Published: May 25, 2007 01:16 pm            

HISTORY: North Tonawanda historian shares details

What better place for the exploration of feminine possessions from the past than in a the tea room of a local antique store?

When Barbara Ifflander arrives for her talk, she carries a suitcase full of lacy, colorful artifacts from sitting rooms and boudoirs of days gone by.

The ladies “taking tea” watch in delight as she opens the suitcase and like magic recreates other times and other places.

Some things are forgotten but familiar, like pin cushions and bed jackets. She shows them linens and lace and much more from ladies bedrooms and personal spaces from days gone by.

“People always say I had that once, but I don’t know what I did with it,” she said.

Other items Ifflander shows may take them by surprise, like a purse that one wears on one’s finger.

“You could dance at the cotillion and never leave your purse at the table,” she said.

Ifflander, a former professor from Buffalo State college, was like many little girls who are drawn to the splendidly mysterious sights and smells of their mother’s closet and bedrooms. She began collecting perfume bottles when she was six.

“I still have a peach colored pair of my mom’s slippers that she used to wear when she got all dressed up, and I have the headdress to match it,” she said.

Her presentation is called “Le Boudoir: The Feminine Collection,” and the first thing she does is explain exactly what the term boudoir means.

“The boudoir was really not a bedroom. It was comparable to a man’s den, and women could entertain their friends there,” Ifflander said.

The delicate, frilly things that occupied women’s special rooms and closets, seem different than they are today, Ifflander said, and that is what often captivates her audiences.

“They don’t manufacture things like this anymore,” she said. “And it’s a pleasure for me to tell people about the past.”

The Mulberry Tree, at 44 Main St. in the City of Tonawanda, has a special “Tree House Tea Room,” for such presentations, and the room is also available for parties and other gatherings. Owner Kelly Gromlovits said she is planning two more special presentations by Ifflander in the fall.

Gromlovits is also looking for other history and antique specialists to talk in her tea room. For more information contact the her at the Mulberry Tree at 693-7235.

        

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