I worked my second shift at Textures for the month of June this past weekend. Father's Day did not prove to be a big draw for bringing hoards to our doorstep, but I did have an interesting chat with one gentleman who was in town from Los Angeles to work on a film.
After making out like a bandit in our store choosing handcrafted pottery, silk scarves, jewelry and notepads, my visitor said how delighted he was to find an artisan shop here. Being in the film business, he has occassion to travel all around the world, and he likes to pick up handcrafted items that are unique to the area he is in to take home as a momento, and also to give as gifts. Sounds reasonable to me!
He related the story of going to Belize, and how excited he was to go out and look for something really special, that was only available there. Unfortunately, all he found were mass-manufactured items for Sears! Not to bad-mouth Sears, but when you go somewhere exotic, you want to be able to find some exotic trinkets to take home and make everyone else jealous that you were somewhere exotic, and they weren't! Items from the latest Wish Book just aren't going to cut it. May have worked when you were 8 and waiting for Santa, but not now.
Visitors to Hamilton are not as unfortunate as those who go to Belize. They can come to Textures and find a beautiful turned wood bowl made from an old butternut tree that fell down in someone's backyard just a few blocks away! Or at least, they can find it until I get back to the shop to buy it myself... ;-)
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