Beautiful Shelves
From Zanecorpwiki
Last night I dreamt that Jen and I were visiting an aging showroom for out of fashion antiques. I remembered of having dreamt this before (though in the dream, it was more that I'd been there before... I wonder if I'd stopped to think about it if I'd have realized?) because I was excited to show Jen this one acquisition which, I seemed to remember from my previous dream, had doomed the shop. It was a large double sided French bar meant to assembled in the middle of a grand room. Maybe 200 feet long, on one side was a regular bar with an elegant curved rail, space for thousands of bottles, a dozen bartenders, mirrors, and understated stylized flourishes. On the back side were built in benches, armrests, shelves for displays and drinks. It was awesome in it's way, clearly a one off for some eccentric millionaire from the roaring twenties. No doubt quite expensive and entirely unsalable as one would need a giant ballroom and a very peculiar taste. The room always had a fair number of people, made remote by the size of the thing itself, though there interest was in an object lesson of folly and never for purchase.
Hung with this albatross, the shop, itself mostlyl warren of much smaller rooms except for the grand bar, was quickly fading. It seemed a few years since my last visit and there were even fewer attendants, wearing dated tuxedos as if they themselves had become servants at the party of the grand bar. The smaller rooms were filled with ridiculous pieces pulled from the warehouse to fill the empty space as the better pieces had been sold off. It was all dead end fashions in faded upholstery.
This time, I found a second floor, empty of visitors and staff. An open floor plan, but stuffed with cabinets and desks. The furniture made a kind of maze, and much of it was tall making it impossible to see very far. Turning a corner, near the lift, I came across a grouping of the most handsome library display cases and reading desks. Modular, but made to all lock together, it was all thick, old wood with curved edges. There were low book cases and taller display cabinets, all fully enclosed on four sides in glass with wooden tops. The reading desks were wide, with maybe five feet between station and old, yellow lights build into a low upper shelf with additional lights with those teardrop metal shades on bendy stalks.
I spent minutes feeling the wood, squatting and inspecting the fine workmanship of the cabinets. Despite their age, they looked to be airtight, and the glass was smooth and clear. The wood's finish had that brownish yellow patina of honest of honest age. One could imagine the set as having been ordered by Carnegie himself. It was finely wrought, but very workmanlike. Clearly for a respectable public library in the county seat of a farm community, or perhaps a state school. It gave the sense of being worn, though there were no dents or blemishes. The set had demanded respect through the years.
I wondered how much it would cost to purchase and hold the set until I could build a library for it. I wanted to get Jen, but that's about the time I woke up.
