Wrought Iron Coat Rack

The entryway is the first thing a house says and the last, and by the door a rack like this caught the coats and hats and bags coming and going all day. Found in Lille and made in the 20th century, it is wrought iron through and through, a row of hooks below a scrolled band and a slatted shelf on top, the whole thing weathered to a soft, faded green. That soft green is the gift of age, the color an old iron rack settles into after decades on a wall, mellowed in a way nothing new can copy. Sylvie hangs it by the back door, a basket of flowers on the shelf and a coat or two on the hooks, the green catching the light against a pale wall.