This is the second fireplace in the gallery, and it has old irons, wrapped in newspaper. You see, I had read that when fossils are dug up and brought to museums, they can often languish for years, wrapped in newspaper. So I took my collection of old irons, and wrapped them in the obituary pages of the newspaper, and we have..... irons in the fire.
At some point in the past, the Hermitage property had a mill. There's a small photo of the mill on the upper left side. I found old shuttles and yarns in the collection, and created a case for them (center). Then I took the whole history of the Hermitage, printed it on cloth, cut the cloth into strips, attached the strips end-to-end, and wrapped them around some of my wooden bobbins - creating actual, tangible history:
Now, there was a closet next to the fireplace, and I asked if I could use it. I had found a photo of two of the Rosencrantz women wearing aprons....
....and used that as a starting point for this:
Some people have skeletons in the closet, some have aprons. These are all from my collection, since the Hermitage collection had to be kept safe in cases.