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WideUnclaspd-The Daisy Windows Wed, 8/3 2:03PM • 16:13 SUMMARY KEYWORDS windows, daisy, tour, nature, house, santa cruz mountains, artistic representation, solid, portion, walking, statuary, divisible, thought, pictures, sarah winchester, room, tree, mikey, luna, find SPEAKERS Christopher Garcia Christopher Garcia  Welcome to wide unclasp. I'm your host, Chris Garcia. This week, we're looking at two things. One, the daisy windows like I promised and to my most recent tour. early July, they added a new tour to the repertoire called Walking with spirits. And I didn't take this one I was with my youngest, and they were scared. But we did take the mansion tour, which was great led by Mikey, who had never had before, but is a very solid Tourguide Luna does sort of a more, I don't want to say energetic because Mike actually had a lot of energy and a lot of knowledge, maybe not as much as Luna, but definitely was super solid knew the whole thing forward and backwards, like he kind of have to, but also seem to have more, whereas Luna great was very, very much faster. I did get the point out also what Luna had pointed out to me last time, the original painted arrow from the original walking to her, never seen that the tour was good. Moved. Well, we did, he did sort of get bogged down at a couple of points. So we ended up having the group right before us because at that point, they were doing every five minutes. So there was a 145 we were the 150 there was a 155. So it was sort of a little tighter. But I got a story I had never heard about from the Halloween period. They had people the various tour guides stationed up on one of the hallways and they were doing jumpscares and stuff. And where he had been standing the previous nights he was actually down the hall from and for no reason anyone can tell one of the windows shattered inwards, and there were no trees, there was no rock or anything thrown. They couldn't they still can't figure out what caused that breakage. This is the first time I've heard of a window breaking. I have heard of window shaking. I have personally experienced one of them opening and closing. And I have heard a story of a window which when you look through it, you sort of see this hazy reflection that shouldn't be there. I've tried to find this window multiple times and I have yet to succeed. I've been told it's on the front portion of the house on the second floor, but I don't know where. So we will see the tour solid again great for kids. My seven year old enjoyed himself immensely. Walking around, just having a good time really enjoyed the video that played out in the million dollar store room back what it used to be called. They're not calling it that anymore. But ultimately, we did a lot we had about an hour to kill. So we did the gardens, which was fun, took a lot of pictures of fountains and so forth for future episodes. So statuary finally got good picture of the statuary, particularly the eagle that is in the little knock before you get into the final room. The final think it's a dining room or sitting room or entertaining room or some such ballroom, maybe the one with the low Italian at ceiling. It's it was a very good tour wasn't particularly hot yet. And I've done tours where it's been 100 degrees outside and it's unbearable, and there was about 85. So one of the things that the house that you notice when you walk through the house is the various breeze patterns. And I think this leads to a lot of the people who say they encountered cold spots. It's because the house is sort of designed with the Victorian idea of encouraging airflow of a certain type. And one thing I never heard was opening the glass. Christopher Garcia  The glass that said into the floor of the skylights to bring in cold air from the basement. I never none of the tour guides I had ever had had explained that before. So this was solid. Ultimately, one of the more interesting tours have a beautiful day for a walk. And I very much like the summer house when it's very light. We were there at like one o'clock so it was almost like noon ish light, but you also have people who love it in the drizzle. And the last time we were there it was overcast and drizzly. But ultimately it was a great tour. And this was a tour where I left my little pumpkin in with Mikey and the rest of the crew while I sort of scurried around to the back of the daisy bedroom to get photos of all the daisy windows that I could. I counted 12 there the four main ones that you can actually get really up close to that I got wonderful pictures of all of them do We have 13 petals on the daisies. I then counted a total of 12 Daisy windows in the room. Now this is actually a point of contention with me, I think there are 13. But with the way that the room is positioned, you can only see 12 including a beautiful triangle one, which I could not get a picture of no matter how hard I tried. They are remarkable John Malin works. And these windows more than any other window in the entire house scream Tiffany, and John Malin was a no slouch in the area of window making. And we'll be talking more about Mellon, in particular later have recently discovered to be the guy who did the windows, who designed them after years of people saying it was Tiffany. And I'm still not 100% Sure, because there are a couple in there that look like 100% Tiffany windows. And we don't have a great record of all of the intakes. So there are arguments over what one thing or another. For example, one thing that I have been told and have not been able to disprove or prove is that the small railing there are two banisters that are at the base of the steps that were supposedly the back steps of the original farmhouse. The thought is those banisters were added later, possibly from pieces that are in the various store rooms, you can see this time we actually when me and my little guy walked around, we took pictures through some of the windows that have the rooms where you see the wooden pieces of the store rooms, and easily they could have come from there. But at the same time, they are 100% in line with everything else there. So I'm, I'm interested to find out more about those in particular pieces. The Daisy windows are remarkable. One would have almost certainly had the one to the very front of the daisy bedroom, which likely would have been I've been trying to figure out what went where when it was in use. So there's sort of a side room, there's a, there's sort of four sections, there's a small hallway type area, that's where the four major windows that you can get up close to are, there's the front area where the fireplace is. And you could imagine that being the sitting area, but at the same time, it would make more sense to have the bed in that portion. Because the warmth from the fire. Plus there would be less light coming in from the windows because of the very front section. Which borders I think it's pretty much right above the front door. And by the way, on the new tour, you go through the front door. Yeah. The the windows would have been put in so much light, that if you wouldn't have a good land that you would be, you know, woken up early. Now it could be that Mrs. Winchester was an early riser, which be cool. And if that was the case, she'd want that light to come in. Because the front windows are also beautiful. The thing about the daisy windows and there are 13 pedals, if that is where the 13th idea came from. It makes a lot of sense. The argument about the 13 comes a lot of different places. Here's some facts. 13 is a relatively scarce number in nature. Christopher Garcia  It is relatively scarce in every aspect. It's prime, but it's also not easy Prime 1-2-3-5-7 Those are easy. 13 is much much harder as is 11. The tradition of the 13 pedaled Daisy, I am not sure if it has its basis in nature, or in artistic representation. Because there are lots of 13 Pedal daisies in artistic representations of various sorts. 13 has morphed over the years to be both good luck and bad luck. The Myth of course of October 13 be the day that the Knights Templar were hoodwinked and killed. The idea that 13 might have been a lucky number for some Friday the 13th All these questions come up, but it does seem to appear. Now maybe not everywhere. It has been attempted to appear. But there are definitely 12 windows in there that I could visually confirm. Would there have been a 13 because the room also not complete and we don't know what happened to some sections of the room it looks like portion of the walls are missing. So could there have been a 13th window but 12 is also an important number here. Now 12 is easily divisible into 360 30. Which makes it and of course when you divide that out, that's how you do the clock and the hour. There is of course, also the chandelier that has currently 13 but may have had 12 It originally and that may well be had she wanted it to have 13 She definitely could have ordered it with 13. I could also see a designer having a 12 candle chandelier and delivering it instead of a 13 that had been ordered. These things happen. Probably not to question. Are there 13 To the house? Yeah, they're the 13 drain hole thing. There's a 13 code hooks which may have been added. The idea is that after her death, they wanted to attach 13 to things. But here's where the good luck bad luck thing comes in. spiritual connections to 13 were not necessarily imbued at the time. There are definitely Thirteen's and a lot of different magical theorems. I do believe 13 in theosophy has some meaning. I looked into it a little bit there was some sort of nature wanderings musings, but I didn't really find anything solid spiritualist in third, spiritualism and 13 does also have some sway. I think what's more important though, is 13 as an aesthetic choice, as well as 12 and an aesthetic choice. Both of them have very interesting meanings one the tie to the clock, the tie to the months 12 exists as four groups of three three has meaning everywhere Of course, the law of thirds, and once you have 12 of something, it is easily divisible easily broken up 13 Is not that way. 13 is complicated. Was she the kind of person who visualized the world as a series of easily divisible and regroup double 12 would have been her number. But 13 is a different question. 13 isn't chaotic, but it's harder. You can do 12 Honestly, the one of the easiest things to do is to find 12 You can do it with a straight edge and a compass. It's not hard. 13 is hard, and the exacting nature of Sarah Winchester would make 13 doable, even without connections to anything otherworldly. If you want to display your skill. Don't do the perfection of the easy, do even the attempt of the difficult 13 is difficult. So I could see it as being sort of a show off II thing. 13 is everywhere. The Daisy and the light was perfect for the daisy windows by the way, if you get the chance to go there are the four right, when you go into the room, you'll go through the doorway and then there's a sort of the small hallway go there there the four that are right there, look very closely at them. They are beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. And then look at the ones in front, the front edge of the house looking outwards. Because what you will see through them, depending on your height is either the sky or the garden. And it's beautiful. It really is. It's a framing of nature with nature, and in the time would have been even more spectacular because there would have been more trees the Parkland would have gone straight across. Christopher Garcia  We tend to forget that Sarah Winchester was building the house surrounded by orchard surrounded by nature. So when you are seeing through something like a window, where there are elements of nature, she's designing it to be an aspect of what she's seeing through the window. That's a beautiful thing and something she would have definitely thought about heavily. Something that Mikey mentioned on our tour that I had never thought of before. mentioned that the big condo complex, which is an absolute eyesore monstrosity had blocked off viewing the sunset over the Santa Cruz Mountains from the fourth floor that one little portion they still have, which made me realize back when it was still seven storeys, she could have easily gone up to the top and had the most spectacular Vista looking over her grounds. She definitely before it blew down could have seen the light tower in downtown San Jose, or at least its illumination, she would have been able to see the sunset over the Santa Cruz Mountains. This idea that I think we need to be more aware of is how do we experience the house as she did and that's incredibly difficult to do in today's modern area. So it's the first time I've ever been on the tour where they talked about the old movie theaters, which I was very interested in particularly the century 23. And mentioning the old olive tree that was there that may have been one of Sir Winchesters original olive trees it was it's a very old tree, and a very annoying tree. I've dealt with it a few times. But I think the point that I took away from this one, this trip and the daisy Windows is that she was interested in the natural world, and how the house interacted with it. That's an important aspect that I had never thought of, and I'm really waiting to dig into this more. Thanks for listening to wide on class. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with an episode. I think I'm going to do the one on the 9085 documentary two times from now, and the next one will likely be on the walking with the spirits tour, which I am taking with my wife in two weeks. So stay tuned. Thanks for listening to white unclasp

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