Gallery: June 2 — Ballenberg Museum 3

Still from the second day I visited the Ballenberg Museum.

Woodpile with one of the sticks inexplicably flayed into a sort of flower.

Façade of a house from Brienz, Bern, 1776. This one didn't have to move too far — just a couple towns over.

Four stages of carvedness of a horse head, brought together by the wonders of time travel. Leave it to the Swiss to be just as good at finding transportation solutions for the fourth dimension as they are for the other three.

A detached oven for the Brienz house.

Closeup. It sort of looks like a hungry guppy. A hungry guppy made of stone and plaster.

I liked this little alcove under the stairs. This is a house that, like numerous Ballenberg buildings, unfortunately has no page on the museum's website. In such cases it's impossible for me to recall their details unless I took a picture of their information placards onsite, which I didn't here. This one is likely from the Berner Oberland or Central Switzerland, at any rate. (2021 note: this has largely been rectified, and I will try to figure out which building this is and link to it.)

The same stairs — about a year has passed between selecting this picture for the gallery and writing these captions, so frankly I've forgotten why I chose it. Maybe I'll figure it out. For now, here you have it: chiaroscuro stairs!

A smithy, from Bümpliz in the Berner Oberland.

Another view of the smithy. This may well be one of the many places at Ballenberg where traditional crafts and industry are demonstrated, so those chalk notes on the hood may be recent, though it'd be cool if they were 150 years old.

A pretty sweet star door on the neighboring smallholder's house, building #1051, from Unterseen, Bern.

Two other pretty sweet doors on the same house.

A kiosk, now snack stand, from Bönigen, also in the Oberland. (It advertises tobacco products, as you can see, but I doubt it actually sells them now. I didn't investigate closely.)

A cool old pavilion, unique among the buildings at Ballenberg, from Sarnen, Obwalden, in central Switzerland (#761).

A carousel, similarly unique.

This is a 19th-century farmhouse from Escholzmatt, Luzern. You can see a ramp extending far into the interior of the barn.

The ramp is a curious element, but surely developed through very practical concerns.

The many layers of wallpaper in this incredibly old house, a FOURTEENTH-century building from Schwyz (the town in the eponymous canton) and the oldest building in the museum.

The barn adjacent to the Schwyz house. It's from Meggen, Luzern, so still Central Swiss — and also very old, from 1501.

That wall is pretty wacky. With luck it's still stable enough to stand indefinitely.

The interior of the barn. I loved the warm glow coming up the wall from below, as well as the fine-grained geometry of the structure.

Another interior shot from the top floor of the barn.