The Painted Petal, built in 1910, restored more than a century later.
We drove out to Breinigsville to take pictures. We stayed because of the house.
There is a particular kind of person who looks at something fragile and thinks, this is worth the trouble.
We know that person well. We have spent since 2019 in various studios in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania, being that team for other people’s flowers. More than 18,000 bouquets have come through our hands, shipped in from all fifty states, most of them arriving in a box with a note that says some version of please be careful with this. We open the box. We take the bouquet apart stem by stem. We press it, we design it, and we hand it back as something that will still be here for generations to come.
So when we walked into The Painted Petal for a photoshoot, we recognized the instinct immediately. Different material, same conviction. A 1910 Craftsman home in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, taken down to the bones and brought back with its leaded glass doors, its terracotta fireplace, and its push button light switches intact. Not renovated into something new. Preserved into something that still works.
That is the whole reason this blog post exists. We came for the light. We left thinking about how two very different crafts are doing the same job.
Our work, in a house that speaks the same language.
What The Painted Petal Actually Is
The Painted Petal is a historic boutique guest house at 7809 Hamilton Boulevard in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, right in the middle of the Lehigh Valley and an easy drive from Allentown, Bethlehem, Emmaus, and Easton.
The house was built in 1910. It is a Craftsman estate, now more than 115 years old, and it has been restored room by room with what their own website calls “luxury accommodations, timeless period décor, and personalized hospitality.” Their restoration story is refreshingly honest about how hard that was. In their words: “You can’t restore a 115 year old house without stuff happening. We’ve had quite an adventure bringing this old girl back to life.”
Here is what you can do with it:
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Stay overnight. Five bedrooms, restored original fixtures, clawfoot tubs, gilded mirrors, period sconces. The property rents as a whole private residence rather than room by room, and sleeps up to ten.
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Host a private event. Up to 30 guests indoors, up to 50 outdoors, across the parlor, library, music room, dining room, terraces, and the reimagined chicken coop.
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Shoot there. Photo and video production, which is how we ended up standing in their music room with a camera and an armful of pressed florals.
The Details Hannah Showed Us
Hannah, on The Painted Petal team, walked us through the house the day of our shoot. This is the part we want to get right, because almost every object in this home has a story attached to it, and most of those stories are about someone deciding not to let something disappear.
The Edison Phonograph That Came Home
Start here, because this one is almost too good.
Before the restoration, the property went up for sale as an estate sale. Everything inside got carried out to the curb, and the neighbors did what neighbors do. They took things home.
Then Maggie Fischer bought the house. And one of those neighbors, the one who had been paying attention, came back. Not to be nosey. To return an original 1915 Edison Diamond Disc phonograph that had come out of that house.
It went back into the music room. In the same spot it had always sat.
A neighbor carried this out to the curb, and then carried it back. It sits where it always sat.
The Leaded Glass Front Door
The leaded glass in the front door and its flanking windows is original to the house.
The best part of the story is what happened generations later. The family workshop that made those windows is long gone, and only one descendant was still around, a grandson or great grandson of the makers. He remembered the windows. Somebody’s grandparents cut and leaded that glass by hand in 1910, and more than a century later their own family could still point at it and say, that one is ours. The restoration work was done by the Neff Chattoe glass studio on Washington Street in Allentown, a business that’s been around since 1908.
That is what preservation buys you. Not just an object. A thread back to the person who made it.
The Terracotta Fireplace
Original terracotta, still the anchor of the parlor. Their own copy calls it “an intricate terra cotta fireplace,” and it earns the description. It is the single best backdrop in the house for portraits, for a cake table, or for a ceremony of eight people.
The Uranium Lamp
Hannah pointed out a Uranium Glass lamp, where anything green in the glass glows in the dark. It is exactly the sort of turn of the century object that would have been perfectly ordinary in 1915 and is now a small marvel.
Two Stickley Chairs
Both original. Both reupholstered, which is the correct answer to the question of what you do with a hundred year old chair you actually want people to sit in. Keep the frame, replace what wore out.
We think about this constantly in our own work. Preservation is not the same as freezing something. It is deciding what has to stay original and what gets to be rebuilt so the thing keeps being useful.
Push Button Light Switches and the Multi Bulb Fixtures
The entire house was rewired. Modern electricity, modern safety, modern everything behind the plaster. And then the original push button light switches went right back on the walls.
Overhead, the antique multi bulb ceiling fixtures are still doing the lighting.
This is our favorite detail in the whole house, and it is the one we would steal for our own studio if we could. You cannot see the compromise. You only see the 1910 version. All the modern function is hidden inside so the original character can stay in front.
Rewired for 2026. Still switched on the way it was in 1910.
The Dumbwaiter
In the kitchen, alongside a fully restored 1920 GE refrigerator and a 1920 Bengal gas stove, there is a rare working dumbwaiter. A hundred years ago it was how you got a tray upstairs without carrying it. Today it is the thing every guest asks about. The dumbwaiter is stamped 1898 by the Muse Brothers of Cetronia, PA- just minutes from this Breinigsville home. They were local inventors who also operated a large working farm about a mile away. The original owners used the dumbwaiter to make their prize winning pies from the basement up to the kitchen.
The dumbwaiter is stamped 1898 Muse Brothers of Cetronia PA. We know it was made right around the corner in Cetronia. They were local inventors who also operated a huge working farm about a mile away. The original owners of the house used it to move their prize winning pies from the basement up to the kitchen.
The 1917 Lyon & Healy Baby Grand
The music room is built around a 1917 Lyon & Healy baby grand piano, with the Edison phonograph nearby, large leaded glass windows on two sides, and original inlaid chestnut floors underfoot.
It is the room we kept coming back to. The light is extraordinary, and a piano lid is an unfairly good surface to style on.
The Cough Syrup Bottle
Yes, there is an antique cough syrup bottle, and yes, the details behind it are better than you are expecting. Quoted directly from their Instagram page, “Long before medicine cabinets were stocked with modern remedies, bottles like this one sat on shelves in homes across America.
Introduced in the mid-1800s, Dr. Bull's Cough Syrup became one of the country's most recognizable patent medicines and was used to treat everything from coughs and colds to more serious respiratory ailments. For many families, a bottle like this represented comfort, care, and the hope of feeling better.
Today, this original antique bottle is a small but fascinating reminder of another era, one in which everyday objects carried stories of the people who used them and the lives they lived.
It's one of countless details throughout The Painted Petal that quietly connect us to the past.”
The Roseville Vases
Very old, very green, very much the correct vase for a house like this. Roseville pottery is the kind of thing people used to buy at the five and dime and now hunt for at estate sales for years.
The E.J. Swigert Schoolhouse Clock
It worked. It was also, by all accounts, extremely loud. Which is a very 1910 problem to have.
The Handwriting on the Wall
While removing the original wallpaper, which had become badly damaged over years of roof leaks and deterioration , Maggie found handwriting on the wall. Actual handwriting, left by someone in this house, uncovered a century later by someone who cared enough to look closely instead of just covering it up. Signed Joseph Snyder and Dorward Wilson in March of 1929. Neither of them probably had any idea what was to befall the country just a few months later as we sank into the great depression.
We have gotten a little emotional about a lot of things in this business, and this one got us. It is the exact feeling of a bride finding her grandmother’s garden flower tucked into her bouquet. Someone was here. They left a mark. Somebody else decided to keep it.
Found during the renovation. Kept, obviously.
And Almost All of It Came From Marketplace
Here is the detail that made us laugh out loud. The furniture throughout the house is largely sourced from Facebook Marketplace. All of it original, all of it period correct, all of it found one listing at a time by somebody with an unreasonable amount of patience and a very good eye.
That is not a shortcut. That is curation. Anyone can buy a reproduction. Finding the real thing, piece by piece, over months, is the work.
Why a Pressed Flower Studio Cares This Much About a House
Let us connect the two halves.
When a bouquet arrives at our studio, it is already dying. That is the honest version. It is a few days past its wedding, it is tired, and the clock is running. Our job is to intervene at the right moment and change what happens next.
While every flower is pressed differently, we generally use one standard process for every bouquet that comes to us. The flowers get taken apart, pressed (this is the part that varies per flower), and dried. What changes is the design decision that comes afterward, whether those preserved blooms become a framed piece or get set in resin. That choice is part of what makes every preservation piece unique.
What we cannot do is stop time. Nobody can. A pressed petal is not the petal you held walking down the aisle. It is thinner, quieter, and often a different color. What it is, though, is real. It is the actual flower from the actual day, and it will still be on your wall when your kids are old enough to ask about it.
That is exactly what The Painted Petal is doing at a much larger scale. That house is not a 1910 house. It is a 1910 house that has been rewired, replumbed, reupholstered, and re-roofed by people who fought to keep every original detail they possibly could. The leaded glass is real. The floors are real. The fireplace is real. The wiring behind the wall is brand new, because that is what it takes to keep a real thing in use.
Preservation is not nostalgia. It is maintenance with a point of view.
Two kinds of preservation, same instinct.
Now the Part Brides Are Going to Care About
We spent a full day in this house, and by hour three we had stopped talking about photography and started talking about having weddings in it. So here is the list of how we would coordinate our wedding around this incredible home, straight from the people who were standing in it.
A Bridal Shower That Does Not Feel Like a Restaurant Back Room
Thirty guests indoors. A parlor with a terracotta fireplace, a dining room with handmade wallpaper and a leaded glass bay window, and a library with hand painted walls and shelves of pre-Titanic books. Gifts on the piano. Grandmother’s china energy without having to borrow grandmother’s china, because the house comes with antique china and period flatware.
A Refined Bachelorette Tea Party
This is the one we would book immediately. Rent the whole house, all five bedrooms, ten of you. Tea and a tiered tray in the parlor, the Edison phonograph playing something scratchy, everyone in the clawfoot tubs at some point, and not a single sash or novelty straw in sight. Outside caterers are welcome as long as they are insured, and you can bring your own beverages or arrange bar service.
It is a bachelorette weekend for the bride who wants photographs she will actually frame.
A Micro Wedding for Thirty
Ceremony in front of the terracotta fireplace or out on the terrace, dinner for your closest thirty inside, dancing in the music room next to a 1917 baby grand. Up to 50 guests for the outdoor portions. Four private parking spaces for overnight guests, with a large public lot nearby for events. Food trucks are allowed if they can reach an electrical outlet, which is a delightfully practical sentence to find on a historic venue’s website.
The bride and her people can sleep in the house the night before and the night of. No hotel block. No shuttle. Just walking upstairs.
An Engagement Party or Rehearsal Dinner
Eight at the dining table, more spread across the parlor and terraces, the chicken coop with its salvaged Gilded Age stained glass for drinks. It photographs like a private estate because it is one.
A Getting Ready Suite Worth Photographing
Every bride has seen the hotel room photos. Beige wall, harsh overhead light, dress hanging off a curtain rod.
Compare: a restored bedroom with original fixtures, a clawfoot tub, a gilded mirror, handcrafted period sconces, and morning light through leaded glass. Hang the dress in front of the window. Done.
An Anniversary, a Vow Renewal, or an Elopement
Two people, ten years in, an overnight stay, and dinner made in a kitchen with a 1920 Bengal gas stove. Or two people at the start of it, eloping in front of a fireplace with a photographer and nobody else.
And for Our Vendor Friends: The Styled Shoot Location You Have Been Looking For
Every wedding vendor in the Lehigh Valley should know about this house. Their own words: “more than a historic boutique guest house, it’s a content creator’s paradise.” Full day exclusive rentals. Natural light in every room. Period authenticity you cannot fake with a rental prop. Interior variety from a 1920s kitchen to a music room to a library, plus gardens and terraces outside.
We shot there for a day and came away with a full quarter of content. Take the hint.
What Happens to the Flowers After
If you do get married in that house, or in any house, here is the thing nobody warns you about. About five days later the bouquet turns brown on your kitchen counter and you feel unreasonably sad about it.
That is the moment we exist for. We are The Pressed Bouquet Shop by Element, a small women owned studio in Easton, Pennsylvania. Since 2019 we have preserved more than 18,000 bouquets for clients in all fifty states, and we ship nationwide, so it does not matter whether your wedding is in Breinigsville or Boise.
You send us the bouquet. We take it apart, press it, and design it into a framed piece or a resin piece with you. What comes back is not a memento of your flowers. It is your flowers.
A house from 1910 is still standing because somebody decided it was worth the trouble. Your bouquet can work the same way.
Start Your Preservation
Not sure which design is right? Book a consultation.
Plan Your Own Day at The Painted Petal
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What: Historic 1910 Craftsman boutique guest house, event venue, and photo and film location
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Capacity: Up to 30 indoors, up to 50 outdoors, sleeps 10 across five bedrooms
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Book: paintedpetal.com
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Follow the restoration story: @paintedpetalgram
Thank you to Maggie and Hannah and the entire Painted Petal team for a full day in a house you clearly love, and for telling us the story behind every single object in it. We are genuinely better at explaining our own work after that tour.
If you preserve one thing, preserve the thing that cannot be replaced.
