It was a clear case of moulding envy, something anyone understands who’s ever felt a pang just from looking at the elegant interior architecture of some yesteryear house.

My friend had moved back South to her native Richmond after half-a-lifetime in post-war New York City apartments, “post-war” being code for bland and simple. You’d be lucky to get hardwood parquet flooring – a little visual texture underfoot, at least – but forget details like casings on windows or doors, chair-rails, and intricate crown mouldings — not with ceilings scarcely eight-feet high.

Bland and simple sums up much American architecture built from the mid-l930s to the l970s, the era when the International Style held sway.  The Post-War arbiters of architectural taste declared, “Less is More!” and intimidated everyone else into believing it…long enough, at least, to rob an entire generation of interiors endowed with details like wainscoting and fireplace surrounds, beamed ceilings, and wood-paneled walls.

Fortunately, a growing number of architects soon began to rebel.  In came the Post-Modern Period, with its familiar motifs and traditional details that reflect and respect the humanity of its inhabitants.

Which is what my friend found so, well, embracing when she returned to the architecture of her youth: houses made with care, with rooms that welcome and details worth seeking out.

House-proud, as Virginians can be, she studied her own walls, some of which had been left “kind of naked” when her vintage Victorian (l890-1902) was renovated by an earlier owner. The dining room was especially bereft and plain. 

Happily, the solution is equally plain: hardwood mouldings in many styles and widths are readily available at quality millwork stores and lumber yards.  Combine them; add layer on layer, and you can create depth and texture and visual interest as rich as any yesteryear interior.

But my friend’s quest was special: she loved the old dentil moulding in her living room and wanted to carry it in to frame the dining room doorway. Years back, she’d rescued fragment of the original moulding from her dog’s jaws and saved it, searching for the craftsman who could custom-make a match. 

Enter Ron Beckstoffer, an artist-craftsman whose magic hand with hardwood is deeply rooted in his family’s millwork business.  Skilled in the Old-World ways of working with mouldings,  Ron slowly and carefully found the right combination –using seven different layers of wood – to recreate the look of the original.

My friend, by now re-steeped in the Richmond way of loving the old and eschewing the new,  looked at the new “old” moulding that now frames the six-foot-wide dining room door and rejoiced, “It looks like it’s been there for a hundred years!”