EXPLORE LAGOON: PIONEER VILLAGE TOUR: Wanship Cabin

 

WANSHIP CABIN

Inside you'll find a rocking chair with the faces of Joseph & Hyrum Smith carved in the back and a table made of scraps from the construction of the Salt Lake Temple. The furniture featured upstairs was borrowed from the Boston Museum Of Fine Arts and had been exhibited in major cities around the United States and Europe. Until a few years ago, vines crawled all the way up the front of this cabin.

 

"This dwelling was the first two-story home built in Summit County. Typical of the sawed log homes of the period, it represents an architectural transition, occuring about 1880, between the more primitive one-story house and later frame house. This log house has never had paint or protective coating. The logs have weathered to the desirable 'desert varnish'."

 

 

 

"Between 1889 and 1893, George Kirkham worked as a finish carpenter on the Salt Lake L.D.S. Temple. Collecting scraps of moldings, door and room trimmings, cut bits of bannister, he fashioned this table from these pieces. There are small blocks of marble and granite. The glass covering the temple picture is from an accidentally broken bit of plate glass from the temple. The largest piece of wood is a trimming from the temple's east door. Thus, all the building materials used to construct the temple are represented in this table. It was a novelty in its own time.

      Circa 1860-1870, made of pine, painted and stenciled, the side chair was built by William Bell who arrived in Salt Lake City in 1854. He worked in Brigham Young's cabinet-making shop for about fifteen years.

      Representing a later phase of pioneer craftsmanship, when sufficient prosperity permitted specialization in skills and the beginning of mass production, the pine rocking chair, circa 1860-1880, was made in Lehi, Utah probably by the firm of Whipple and Kirkham, early Rocky Mountain furniture manufacturers.

      The high-post bed, made of pine, was grained to simulate oak and belonged to Daniel Wells, counselor to Brigham Young, a judge and a mayor of Salt Lake City; the bed circa 1860-1870.

      Pine, one of the few woods available to frontier settlers was often grained to look like more expensive wood. This cupboard, circa 1850-1860, was grained to simulate rosewood.

      The 'Mormon Couch' is a typical example of this style of Mormon architecture. In variations of the original style such a couch could be found in almost every home of any size in the territory. Fashioned of pine it was utilized as both couch and bed, and was usually covered with quilts and cushions."

 

NEXT STOP: Smoke House

 

 

SOURCES

Lagoon

Deseret News

 

Updated 25 Aug 2007