I went poking around and found this Plaster Medallion Advice

Here's a link to a millwork specialty company Wholesale Millwork They seem to a have a variety of sizes and style maybe one of these would work

This Old House advice This Old House Ceiling Medallion Info

i loved that first article, oco. it matched up with many of my assumptions.

i'm thinking the takeaway is that you arent required to have a medallion to be 'authentic', Jessica, as your house would have been electric, not gas, to start, and the medallions were falling out of favor by then. but it wouldnt be out of place

i'd stick with oco's plaster medallion advice for sizing, both for the room and relative to the size of the fixture.

my 1870 home has 2 original 'on steroids' medallions mentioned in oco's link. the one in the library still had the gas fittings inside when we moved in, our electrician had to wire the ceiling. we moved the original 'had been gas but wired for electricity' chandelier from the dining room to the library, the library had no ceiling fixture just the gas-fed medallion when we bought the house.

I do not see any crown molding in the space and if you are not adding it I would not do a medallion the light fixture is very ornate and the room is not big I think less is more in this case.

In the 20 s they often used very large federal style or Art Deco medallions, with corner ones to boot. Also used matching cornices. I would get the largest you can afford, your ceiling height can take it and it will add so much drama and value to your home. There was so much money floating about in the 20s, it was an age of excess. Just remember to paint it in full, before you put it up.

I don't know if this room had crown molding originally. One of the double parlor rooms still has it in tact but the other does not. I see traces of plaster repair in the ceiling and walls above the picture rail where it would have been. That leads me to believe that at one point, these rooms had some sort of crown but it might not be necessarily so.

I guess what I am driving at is that a medallion as well as other molding and plaster details are in the works. I'm just trying to determine the scale and general style to use as I have absolutely nothing to pull from other than a heap of conflicting advice from a variety of credible sources.

oco- Great article! Thank you.

nnigrt - I have major ceiling envy for certain. How lucky to you are to salvage that beautiful medallion for your library! :) I can't wait to get to mine. I'm still deep in paint swatches and test patches. At least the books are unpacked. :)

Patricia - I agree that less is more in most cases but I really want a little drama in my dining space though. I have the original windows and casings, fireplace and pocket doors. It is a smaller dining room by today's standards for certain but it is a fairly large and formal home over all. It is one of the cornerstone houses of my neighborhood and I would like to turn up the grandeur to embrace the era that the home was built. I was going to add crown and a medallion to this space then paint the ceiling charcoal. I hung my sheers (for privacy) just below the area where the crown will eventually be but I have yet to install drapery. What would you suggest to get some of the ROARING back into this dining room without being garish?

chook - The roaring 20's were a very special architectural era for certain. Unfortunately, the Home Depot special ceiling medallion and chandelier that is currently there is so dreadfully out of place it's embarrassing! :)

ohhh jessica if you could have seen the dining room ceiling when we moved in you would have been terrified not envious, i think the medallion was all that was holding it up. after the contractor screwed the ceiling plaster back up to the lath we gained about 2 inches.

yes you should go for it, including putting up at least a simple crown if its elsewhere in the main rooms.

and it doesnt have to match the other.

As usual, nngirt brings up a very good point. Before installing a large ceiling medallion , be sure to check out the soundness of your ceiling joists. Termites or woodworm, and you could have a heavy plaster mess in your soup tureen. They are very heavy.

So, it has been a while but I wanted to share the changes made so
far. The dining room is far from complete but I have found that more
often than not, the needs of my old house dictate the renovations and
not my imagination or availability of beautiful things to fill the
space. :) Thanks to all of you for your help.

I ended up going
with a pre-fab medallion instead of plaster due to the weight. I still
have the original ceilings. and I wasn't sure of their condition or
ability to handle a plaster medallion so I figured better safe than
sorry. Thankfully, they turned out to be in very good shape overall.
Unfortunately, textured but in good shape. Thank God!

So the
chandelier was an inexpensive find from overstock. I took off the outer
rim of crystals to keep the scale right for the room. I used an oil
rubbed bronze glaze to "age" and tone down the bright yellow brass. I
still have to address the chain but I'll wait until I am ready to scrape
off the texture and paint the ceiling as it will have to come down
again anyway. I'll change the chain while I have the ladders out.

The
dining table is a clearance steal of a deal from Restoration Hardware.
Much bigger then my former dining table and much more in scale with the
fireplace. The Jacobean radio cabinet on the left is a flea market find
from Nashville. I have had it for twenty years. It has lived all over
the country with me and held so many precious things. It has been
lovingly restored and in its current incarnation, housing booze! I'm
working on a butlers pantry and hope to have a much more elegant job for
my lovely radio cabinet in the near future but for right now, it has
the thankless task of being a bar. :/

The next steps (house
willing) are scraping the ceiling and painting it a lighter version of
the lovely blue that I used on the walls of the adjacent drawing room or
maybe even the butter-cream from my foyer. Not sure yet. It's all
pending what I find for rugs and window treatments. We certainly need a
little color! I would still like to add crown moulding and I would like
to restore the space to the right of the fireplace as well. That closet
to the right of the fireplace is not original and it takes away from the
balance and symmetry of the room. In fact, the symmetry of this house
is so strong it wouldn't be surprising to find a window under the layers
of drywall used to turn that niche into a closet. But that is a project
for another time.

Lovely!

Hoping you plan to use the picture rail for hanging art.

Flo - Thank you! These old houses are so beautiful in their architecture that it's really hard to go wrong. Simple, somewhat basic and classic design elements go a long way to amp up the elegance in these old girls! The heavy drapery gets stowed away in the warmer months but I leave the white sheers for privacy as the neighbors are somewhat close here in the city.

Deco - Yes! My father paints in watercolor and I am planning to use the space to hang his work. I haven't gotten to it yet but the picture rail will most certainly be used!