2-Oct-99 RISD Fall alumni sale
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We took our stamps down to Providence for the Rhode Island School of Design fall alumni sale. The first time we ever sold any of our stamps stamps was at that sale in the fall of '92, when Charley was a senior. He set up a table before we got down there and sold enough that he had scrawled out a page listing the stamps he had at that point, with images stamped out, and was taking orders for more. We had to work from there to assign catalog numbers.
The RISD sale is during the fall parent weekend at the school, and it's also homecoming weekend, so there are a lot of people there besides people from Providence. It's on the sidewalks of Benefit Street, running along the side of College Hill one steep block up from the bottom. That block of Benefit has old brick and stone college buildings on both sides. Farther along are some of the oldest houses in Providence, well-maintained wooden colonials packed together alongside early 19th century houses.
Let's see, who else was there? RISD has an excellent glass department, and there are always several tables of glass. The booth on our right had garments, mostly made of Polartec material. On our left was a booth of ceramics, run by a woman who has a gallery in Wellfleet on Cape Cod. She was doing a super sales pitch the whole time, telling customers, for instance, that they could put a round of brie in one of her pie plates, drizzle it with honey and nuts, bake briefly, and voila! Or, I like to do this in my casseroles... and these little sets (a miniature teapot nested into a cup) can be a tea set by themselves or use as a sugar and creamer.
One of the booths we've bought the most from over the years is Robin Pfahning's. She makes clocks and other items from painted polymer clay (I think -- unless it's just plaster) with sheet metal and plastic and wire embedded in it. We've got several of her clocks for ourselves -- Anne got one today -- and for presents. I'm particularly fond of Robin's little bugs:
I have a bug like that sitting on my computer at work. In the highly unlikely event that there's ever a problem with a program I write (and would you be interested in buying a bridge?), when someone comes into my office and asks, “Have you found the bug yet?” I always have a ready answer. The clock Anne got has a golden sun with long wavy plastic points and magenta arrows pointing out at 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock.
The booth I was most impressed with was selling digital color prints on silk scarves. The colors looked to me as bright as silk painting, but some images were detailed scans of leaves and others were computer generated fractals and other computer drawings. The combination of intense color and detailed images were something I haven't ever seen before.
RISD sales are always a good place to see wonderful earrings and interesting clothing. Lots of the customers are alums or art students, and the rest of them are looking for quality work and know it costs money, so nobody asks why stamps have to cost five to seven dollars. The weather was beautiful, sunny and dry in the 70's; there was a jazz band somewhere down the street; there was an aroma of honey-vanilla roasted nuts wafting along from ten booths away; and all the customers (including plenty of attractive women) were smiling. It was a great way to spend the day. Plus, we sold a ton of stamps.
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