depot-vente

Why didn't I have my camera?

This weekend I went to a depot-vente with a couple friends. "Depot-vente" doesn't really translate. It kinda means "second-hand (furniture) shop" but when the French say "second-hand" they don't mean Grandma's avocado-green corduroy couch. A better translation into "American" would be: beautiful hand-carved furniture lovingly crafted before most of our ancestors emigrated to the New World. And I'm talkin' about great-great...grandpa George who came in 1742 (my genealogist mother will soon correct the decade and year: but the century's right.)

Anyway, this depot-vente was the depot-vente to end all depot-ventes. (Type THAT ten times fast!) Imagine with me....

(blurry vision gives way to soft-focus image)

The largest warehouse you can, divided into two stories. In the middle, a circular ramp connects the two floors. The ramp is large enough to drive a van up and down, but the left half of the ramp, as you ascend) is 15-feet deep in jumbled antique chairs, each one lowered/dropped down from above as it arrives. The chairs are right-side up, up-side down, side-ways, diagonal and every other direction you can imagine. THEN you arrive upstairs, where furniture is piled four-deep--chests, tables, armoires, chairs, ottomans---anything you can imagine.

Chandeliers hung helter skelter from the ceiling. Paintings and mirrors covered every wall. Carpets and objet d'art scattered wherever they would fit on tables.

The only thing more abundant than the furniture was the dust and mold.

It was AMAZING. I bought a wroght-iron mirror that I LOVE. Unfortunately, the prices of the furniture pieces were as if we were in one of the priciest cities in the world...which we are.

To be in that place, one had to have a high tolerance for dirt, chaos and tight places. There was one main aisle in which two people could squeeze by each other barely, and regular side aisles that you had to shimmy down side-ways, never sure when a 17-th century dining room table was going to land on your head.

I haven't BEGUN to explain the chaos. Or the absolute BEAUTY of some of the pieces. Every one (almost) was a treasure.

Why didn't I bring my camera?