Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Happy Birthday High Point Market

This week is also Market week in High Point. I miss the days of flashing a business card, getting credentials and going to market. As a designer, I always went with my employer to see my fabrics and how the interior designers used them. It's great to hear that the piece is creating large sales dollars. It is the world's home for home furnishings and just everybody is there.

The connection to the Revolution at market is most obvious. The high end furniture is primarily influenced by the 18th century, - that's right our Revolutionary and Colonial days.

But thanks to the American experiment, the market evolved here and you can get just about everything.

What next? Well, if you start a business connected to the industry and register you can go to market again in October. It happens twice a year. They don't just let anyone in however. You need an economic reason. So make something and sell it to someone or bring it to market, then register and go!! NC is the place to be.

As with all things from our Revolutionary times, its easy to forget the contributions of our forefathers. An interesting webpage from the Tradition Fine Arts Organization explains how things are brought into focus...

"It took only one sentence uttered from the American curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a speech at the First Antiques Forum at Williamsburg in 1949 to ignite a firestorm of research and exhibitions on early American Southern furniture. "Very little of artistic merit was made south of Baltimore," he declared. He might as well have fired the first cannon volley on Ft. Sumter."

The webpage reminds me to tell you that if you can't get to market, you can get to the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) at Old Salem in Winston-Salem. There you will see what fine furniture is all about. The original documents for the quote in the Traditional Fine Arts Organization comes from the Mint museum in Charlotte.

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