KEEPSAKE CHRONICLES
Romancing the Past
The Max Stone
An old customer called me up and told me she had a piece that she wanted to bring over. When Joan came walking in carrying this colonial-style floor lamp, my first comment was, "Joan, Sears sells lamps like that for $69.95." She looked at me and said, "It's not the money, Rick – it's the memory. This was my mother's floor lamp, and I sat on her knee at three and read the first page of a book. When I went to college, I majored in American literature and took the lamp with me. Since then, I've had this lamp for 35 years and read all of the American classics beneath it."
I looked at the lamp and I saw that, while most of it had a mild case of wear-and-tear, the base was rusted and rotted away. I said, "What happened to the base of this lamp?" Joan smiled. "Rick, I rescued a puppy from the shelter a couple of years ago, and shortly after that he found this lamp. Max loved the taste of the base and he licked it constantly, no matter where I put it – the living room, the TV room, the bedroom. I'm wondering what you can do to restore this special lamp?" Now, I couldn't restore what Max had literally destroyed – but by no means did that mean that this was a hopeless situation.
I asked Joan if she could bring Max by the studio. She looked at me and said, "That's not so easy, because Max is no longer a little puppy. He's close to two years old, and he's two hundred pounds of St. Bernard."
Nevertheless, Joan brought Max over and we got a sense of what this massive "culprit" looked like. We photographed Max, and within a day or two quite a bright idea occurred to us.
We rescued all the original parts of the lamp by burnishing the brass top and prepping and priming and marbleizing the original "base" in faux art. Using the colors and contours of Max's face, we created a brass and pseudo marble conversation piece that depicts and reflects a unique portrait of a lovable culprit and the pleasure of his owner.
But the story doesn't end there. Extrapolating, we created still other pieces: a special Max sport shirt, a Max belt and buckle, a Max hard hat, a Max dining room chair and a Max fireplace mantel and andirons. Using his colors and character, we complemented his memory and preserved not only Joan's special heirloom, but the continuing saga of Max.
