Antiques on the Bluff
Got up at 6 a.m. Sunday (5 central time!) to ride my bike to Antiques on the Bluff in St. Joe to help Jan and Mark set up. They had things pretty well in hand. The event was huge. And the nice thing is the rain held off.
Mark and Jan go to quite a few of these shows and know many of the other dealers. It is a guild of sorts.
Anyway, Mark told me they know of one woman who gives her pieces a made-up provenance. She’ll tell her customers, Oh I got that piece out of an old barn.
While this isn’t exactly true it isn’t exactly a lie. It most likely did come from a barn and since it is an antique it, of course, came from an old barn.
It would be false advertising to claim it came out of Napoleon’s barn.
The point is: Customers want a story. Yes, they are buying an old pulley, but they know it is more than that; they are buying history.
As a writer and memoirist, I know this as well. We can get caught up with how something actually happened and miss the story—or we can lose the exact details and tell a fun story.
Now if you buy this—then I have a pulley for you that once belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Mark and Jan go to quite a few of these shows and know many of the other dealers. It is a guild of sorts.
Anyway, Mark told me they know of one woman who gives her pieces a made-up provenance. She’ll tell her customers, Oh I got that piece out of an old barn.
While this isn’t exactly true it isn’t exactly a lie. It most likely did come from a barn and since it is an antique it, of course, came from an old barn.
It would be false advertising to claim it came out of Napoleon’s barn.
The point is: Customers want a story. Yes, they are buying an old pulley, but they know it is more than that; they are buying history.
As a writer and memoirist, I know this as well. We can get caught up with how something actually happened and miss the story—or we can lose the exact details and tell a fun story.
Now if you buy this—then I have a pulley for you that once belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte.
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