To achieve this uniquely American-Gothic style in your own home, throw away all garbage cans, refuse to pay utility bills, bend the good silver via psychokinesis, and engage in heated conversation with family portraits. Find additional inspiration in works of literature:
After Holbein, (1928) Edith Wharton's momento mori of old crone Mrs. Jasper, once New York's leading hostess. Now hideous in her askew tiara on a purple-black wig, and seated at one end of the long uninhabited dining table in her big house on Fifth Avenue. Sèvres Rose Dubarry centerpieces are arranged with crumpled newspaper to substitute hothouse orchids; mineral water is announced by the footman as Château Lafite, '74 and handed in turn to one after another of the spectral guests.
In H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, (1927) -- the titular character lives in "a great Georgian mansion atop the well-nigh precipitous hill that rises just east of the river" inspired by Providence's Halsey House, built in 1801.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, (1851) inspired by a late-seventeenth century house in Salem, Massachusetts. Old Hepzibah Pyncheon, dignified in her rusty silks but desperately poor, worry's over "a china tea-set painted over with grotesque figures of man, bird, and beast..." indistinguishable from her own memories. "They were almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony." Hepzibah says "And if one of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it."
These clever author's conceits construct complex works of fiction around historic, tangible places to emphasize the seemingly-ancient trappings of civilization as trivia in relationship to the vaster, more ancient chaos of the universe.
In order to "Keep up with the Jones'es" :
(referring to the comparison of one's neighbour as a benchmark for the accumulation of material goods, its origins in the privileged lifestyle of Edith Wharton, née Edith Newbold Jones, father's family*) take a second morgage out on the 'ole manse and procure a Qianlong Chinese export porcelain tea service for your very own, and similar to Hepzibah's, at Richard Gould's shop in Los Angeles.
richardgouldantiques.com/chinesexport
*Shari Benstock, No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. (New York: Scribner's, 1994), 26.
More tips for the ardent do-it-yourselfer:
Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding, Tolin, Frost, Steketee Oxford University Press (2007)
