EXCEPTIONAL LOUIS XVI PERIODFIREPLACE (LAST QUARTER OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AND PRIOR TO 1790) IN VERY FINE CARRARA VENATIN MARBLE WITH INCRUSTATIONS IN PRECIOUS GREEN ALPS MABRLE OF ANCIENT QUARRYING (NO LONGER EXTANT), EXCELLENT PRESERVATION, PROVENANCE COSTA AZZURRA, OFFENSIVE PRICE WHEN COMPARED TO ITS HISTORICAL-STYLISTIC IMPORTANCE AND TO THE PRICES OF MODERN "IN STYLE" FIREPLACES, MOSTLY ALMOND-EYED.
THE PERFECTIONIST CUSTOMER DOES NOT RHYME WITH FIREPLACE
I have to tell you this one, both because it is too cool and because it has relevance to this ancient and noble fireplace:
You should know that a few days ago a customer from Venice came to my warehouse.... He had called earlier and asked if he and his wife could come on a Sunday morning.... Of course I said yes, I just informed him that my time availability would be until 1 p.m. ... Despite the fact that my age is dangerously close to Methuselah's, I am an indefatigable and no longer correctable mama's boy, so Sunday lunch at Mom's house is sacred....
“No problem,” she replied, ”we'll be at her place at 10:30!”
“See... I said to myself. By 10:30 your wife will be putting on her finishing touches, and even if you're Fangio, you won't be here at my place until 12:45..”
Caz. at exactly 10:30 that morning, I hear a sizzle of tires on the gravel in front of my warehouse.... We have no asphalt or concrete here, and the ancient gravel in my entryway warns me more gently than any bell of someone's arrival....
I get out and... I see a man alone at the wheel.... By his side no female presence... Which is a very bad thing since the man, when it comes to shopping for the home (but not only) counts as the two of cups when trumps are clubs...
He's still on the car, turning off the various electronic ammenities and sheltering in a leather-look case a tom tom tom first stuck with a suction cup to the “pare-brise” (I know, it's probably not spelled that way, but... I with foreign languages have always struggled, and. LOST !!). With that 2400-inch screen in front of his eyes our man could not see the road, but of the navigator nothing escaped him!!!”
He has yet to get out of the cockpit and I can't resist saying to him.
“But what did you come here to do alone, without wives or females in charge you will SAFELY have to take another ride from Venice to Reggio Emilia, you alone nothing can decide, you know that, right?!”
“I'm ahead of the game,” he replies, ”my wife couldn't make it to get ready by 8 o'clock (and you thought so...), so I left alone, for me punctuality is EVERYTHING..”
Now, after he meticulously has everything set up inside his cockpit that looks more like a nuclear power plant than a car, he is about to get out of the car, but... his feet remain halfway up... They don't come down at all, and his figure is motionless as if he had been seized by a stroke, his face pensive.... A little I worry and escape saying....
“Any problem?! Not feeling well!?”
“Noo.. - he replies after a few seconds.-It's just that here on the ground it's.... wet!!!”
“It's wet yes, yesterday so much water came that it seemed sent!.... But ... excuse me, what's the problem? .. There's gravel, she won't get muddy..”
“It's just that my SKODA YETI is new, then I dirty the mats..”
Caz... but how, you buy a SKODA YETI, a 4X4 off-road vehicle, a maybe even amphibious vehicle that allows you to ford the Po even if it's in flood and. you get scared at the fact that you'll get the floor mats wet!!!?
In short, to end it and to scurt it (Emilian way of saying that stands for “shorten it”..), after ten minutes of negotiations, and after with said customer we studied the shortest route to reach the entrance of my warehouse with the least water damage, it was decided to go down... The walk was “on his toes,” like Carla Fracci, and I am sure that once he got back into that power plant, those toes never touched the fateful, virgin mat....
Of course he didn't buy anything, he photographed a thousand fireplaces and took notes on even the slightest scratches each one bore on its surfaces.... It would then be his women who would decide which one would fit....
Here, such a customer will never buy the fireplace I am presenting here, this rare 18th-century mantel, of delightful scratches and patinated signs of life has a thousand and one!!!
P.S: I have told you this story since, as expected, this customer never heard from me again, horrified as he was by the historic scratches that my fireplaces proudly bore on their surfaces.
