My Wartime Office

1. What started it all, a simple idea to use clipboards in a creative way. Each board has a light cardboard 'page' with four color profiles of a specific WW2 British aircraft, scanned mostly from Osprey Publishing's Combat Aircraft and Aircraft of the Aces series of books, clipped to it. A brief description is under each profile and the header at the top of each page, giving the make and model (Avro Lancaster for instance), is in the Courier font for a suitable typwritery feel.

2. A very simple effect: Two strips of masking tape across the room's only window make the place look like it expects an air raid at any moment!

3. Wartime posters, scanned in from books, blown up, printed on 11"x 17" paper, mounted on foam core, and hung.

4. A simple black frame with a picture of Winston Churchill (downloaded from the web) resolutely staring out at us.

5. 1930s/1940s style CD storage boxes with labels (in Courier again, of course) like 'Bomber Command' and 'Fighter Command'.

6. A calendar: Created in a desktop publishing application, the background is a landscape wartime poster, downloaded from the web, as a watermark, the right is an accurate calendar (except for the year!), and to the left is another wartime poster, again downloaded from the web. The sheets of paper that make up the months hang in front of a simple piece of thin wood, cut just a bit bigger (12" x 18").

7. A 1930s/1940s style bankers lamp, ubiquitous to the period.

8. 1930s/1940s style letter storage boxes with labels like 'WAAF' (my wife's stuff!) and 'Western Approaches'. The cleverest thing done with these was to fold down the back of one so my scanner could fit in it, thus hiding most of it when not in use. It's the one next to the lamp. When I need the scanner, I just take off the lid!

9. Cold, sterile, but servicable corner computer tables. I got these at Staples for $99 each over a decade ago but have given them some real flare by removing the panels and covering them with dark olive green felt (pulled very tight and stapled underneath) for a billiards/conference table look and feel, common for the period. It's what really makes the room click.

10. Reproduction Pilot's Notes for assorted RAF aircraft of the period, placed in out of the way but noticable areas of the desktop for effect. 11. RAF roundel mousepad! 12. 1930s style phone from Pottery Barn. 13. A weather indicator, a direct reference to the Cabinet War Rooms. Being underground, staff needed to know what it was like out before they ascended. Options include Clear, Rainy, Cloudy, Snow, Windy, and Foggy. My kids generally like to change it!

14. Three large pieces of foam core board with a variety of maps from the book 'Historical Maps of WW2' cut up and mounted on them. The book can often be found on bargain book tables for $4.99 in the U.S., so cutting it up was no great loss! They are categorized: One is sea operations, one is air operations, and one is Overlord-specific. 15. Circa 1940 reproduction RAF Battledress blouse and officer's service dress cap. A Final Note: The wood that makes up the brackets that hold up the shelf in the middle of the room (just a stained board), the holders for the map panels, and the hook from which the RAF blouse hangs all came from an old planter my sister was getting rid of. I snatched it up due to the aged look of the wood and voila, you're looking at the results.

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