Elizabeth Findley Shores
Occupation: Independent scholar
Where I live: With my husband, Buddy Johnson, in Little Rock’s Pleasant Valley neighborhood.
My favorite space: Our living room.
Why? The living room is the room to which I retreat. With the doors to the foyer closed, I have been able to work on my current project, The Pink Party: Domestic Interiors, Social Rituals, and the Southern Fantasy in Postbellum Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The room contains family heirlooms including a 7-foot chaise lounge that my great-great-grandparents bought for the house they built in 1859. During the Great Depression, the family rented out the house. When those tenants moved on, they took the chaise with them. After World War II, my grandmother traded them a modern sofa to get it back. She reupholstered it, and it was a focal point of her living room when she gave the reception known as the “Pink Party” - the climactic event in my book as well as a metaphor for white denial in Southern culture.
If I could change one thing to improve this space, I would: Find museum homes in Tuscaloosa for the family pieces so I can focus on my next project.
HomeStyle, Pages 35 on 04/20/2013