Der Alte Fritz's Man Cave

The Library Room at Schloss Fritz (right hand side)

I am sitting at home today waiting for the plumber to arrive to make some minor repairs, so while I am killing some time, I thought that I would post some pictures of my Library or Den, A.K.A. where plans for world domination of the miniatures world are made. LOL!

I keep most of my better reference books in this room, but I have ten times more military history books on hand that I store in other rooms of the house. When I need to quickly find some SYW era uniform information from Bleckwenn or Menzel, this is my "go to" place. A couple of nice reading chairs and a CD to play some Mozart or Handel, and I'm ready to lock myself away for the afternoon in good spirits. The entry has a pair of sliding pocket doors, one of which you might be able to make out in the picture below, on the left - lower corner, so that I can close off the noise of the world and read or work on some of my writing projects.

The Library Room (left hand side)

The roll top desk is a mid 18th Century piece that my father bought while visiting London back in the 1970s. In fact, it is one of a pair of such desks that I inherited from him, so they have some sentimental value to me, plus they look nice and are highly functional. The television set is rarely used, but when the mood stikes me, I can lounge of the small couch and catch up on my programs.

Here is a view of one of the book shelves in the room. Early in my life, I started collecting Royal Daulton Toby Jugs, a few of which are displayed here. More recently, I have started collecting statues of Napoleon - I probably have close to a dozen in this room on various shelves. One of the Napoleons is well camouflaged - he is part of the handle on the Duke of Wellington jug on the top shelf. Further down, you can see Lord Kitchener, Winston Churchill and more Napoleon's that were cast in Germany.

Finally, a British grenadier mitre from the Seven Years War - a reproduction that I purchased from The Discriminating General store in Canada and a Ron Tunison brass sculpture of General Lee from the ACW. (I'm a Union man myself, but I couldn't pass on this sculpture so I bought it anyway).

Shelves full of Napoleonic, AWI and ACW books.

While I have SYW books scattered all over the house, most of my Christopher Duffy books and a number of German language publications are stored on these shelves, which seem to be groaning a bit from the weight of the books. I bought the John Bull statue years ago with the idea of turning him into a  table lamp, but never got around to doing it. The third shelf down contains my growing collection of Frederick the Great statues. As you might guess, I like to collect statues. Mrs. Fritz gave me the Admiral Lord Nelson Toby jug for Christmas the year we moved into this house.

Shelves for the SYW and Ancients wing of the Library

 There are also a few Ancients books on these shelves. Just to do something completely different, I developed an interest in the Late Roman Empire era (300AD rto 470AD), so I managed to collect a few of those books along the way.

That is all for now, I might come back later and embellish this post, but I have got to run off and do some errands for the family. Happy New Year everyone!