Curio shop

“ The merchants select their stock to suit the tastes of their local customers, as everywhere. At a curio shop we picked up some curious old pieces of silver, but they are valuable only because they are unique. ”

“ To end with a brief classification, it may be noted that there are dealers whose shops have private rooms in the rear where trade can be carried on in the same way as with a dealer who has no shop. From this double-faced form we pass to the real shopkeeper, the vaster class ranging from the vendor who can afford to fill his window with the choicest samples down to the modest curio shop, the benevolent harbour of the humbler modes of expressing art. ”

“ Above some shops were dragons, over others tigers, or the phœnix, or lotus blossoms all painted in every colour of the rainbow, and hanging from them signboards bearing the name of the shopkeepers. The cash shops have almost a screen of strings of gigantic cash dependent from the eaves. The curio shops still contain things to charm the soul of the artist, though every day sees their treasures diminishing, to be replaced by modern imitations. ”

“ It is always the same in China. Everything is ugly, the colouring and designs hideous. They are grotesque and not quaint, gaudy and not brilliant. And we have visited many curio shops, only to leave them in despair. The single beautiful things are the objets de vertu in jade and crystal, tiny cups and vases, snuff bottles, carved images, all so delicately wrought, but charged for as if worth their weight in gold. ”

“ The complementary characters to which we have alluded in our bird’s-eye view of the curio market are liable to exchange their functions according to the moral principles directing their actions, and in this peculiar chameleon-like attitude change colour and hide, from friendship to enmity, assisting the collector in his pursuit, namely, of helping the dealer to dupe him. In broad terms they include art critics, experts, go-betweens and many metamorphoses of the most variegated agents. To these forces must be added the silent help that is generally operative in favour of the dealer. ”

“ After a time I learnt the price of nearly every curio in his store. There was never a fixed value for anything: Inchie was always led by his customer. Perhaps an American and his wife would come in, the man saying nothing, the wife remarking on everything. ”

“ But very soon Curio stepped in, who carried you off from your public trade, and, as if he had bestowed a matron's robe upon you, settled you in a steady and durable wedlock. No boy bought for the gratification of passion was ever so wholly in the power of his master as you were in Curio's. How often has his father turned you out of his house? How often has he placed guards to prevent you from entering? while you, with night for your accomplice, lust for your encourager, and wages for your compeller, were let down through the roof. That house could no longer endure your wickedness. ”

“ Many a shop, the entire stock of which is not worth a hundred dollars, is protected not only by bolts and bars within, but by half a dozen of those huge and clumsy contrivances that the rest of the world used in the Middle Ages. To “shut up shop” is a real task in Quito, of which the lugging home of the enormous keys is by no means the least burdensome. 132Naturally, if a real burglar cared to take the trouble to journey to Quito, he would find far less difficulty at his trade than in a city ostensibly less secure. ”

“ The Curlytops had seen such packages before at their father’s store in Cresco, and they knew what the boxes and barrels held—sugar, canned goods, dried fruits, tea, coffee, oatmeal, overalls, hats and all the things that go to make up a general store. All these goods must be taken out of their packages and arranged on the shelves.
“Couldn’t we help in the store, Daddy?” asked Ted, as his father started toward the bungalow, to open it with a key he had.
“Oh, yes, I guess so,” was the answer. [116] “I expect a couple of men up to do the heavy work. They ought to be here now.” ”

“ My tastes and my caste don't happen to coincide—that's all, Quarren."
They walked together to the front stoop.
"When do we open shop?" asked the Earl, briskly.
"As soon as I get the reports from our experts."
"Won't business be dead all summer?"
"We may do some business with agents and dealers."
"I see. You and I are to alternate as salesmen?"
"For a while. When things start I want to rent the basement and open a department for repairing, relining [Pg 280] and cleaning; and I'd like to be able to do some of the work myself." ”

“ As this town is the great point of contest between the Japanese and the foreigner, everything in the shape of "curios" can be obtained in its marts and bazaars. Most of the objects are novel to us, and from their attractiveness generally induce sailors to purchase on the strength of that very quality. Except in very rare instances a piece of real lacquer can scarcely be obtained, most of it having already found its way to Europe; that which we see here is made chiefly for sailors, who needs must take something home—they care not what, nor are they very [123] particular about the price asked. ”

“ The material employed is the fibre of the cactus, which is very serviceable. Thirty persons at this pursuit earn from eighteen to twenty cents per day wages. There is no foundery in Quito, and all of the iron-working is restricted{339} to what is done in a few blacksmith shops. There is one combined cart and blacksmith shop, at which carts are made and general repairing is done, employing ten men at twenty-five cents a day. ”

“ Medicated and begrimed specimens of this Bishiui-yaki are still successfully palmed off on unsuspecting foreigners to an incredible extent, and will probably continue to find purchasers so long as men are sanguine enough to fancy that the long-since depleted curio market still contains treasures accessible to themselves alone, and so long as the disfigurements of age and the blemishes of wear find people who regard them as beauties. Vases made in Owari with clay from Kiushiu may, of course, be quite as good as anything produced in Satsuma itself, but in point of fact they are not. ”

“ Then he folded his arms on the counter, gazing out of the half-open door, which was held back by a chain that could be released from behind the counter. “It’s queer,” he said. “That girl hadn’t more than two red cents back of last fall. And now—why, now she can handle more stuff than I’ve collected in twenty years. And she handles it right, too, that kid. They reckon she’s collected all the luck in Beacon. Well, I’d say she’s collected most of the business brains with it.” He laughed. “And she’s still buying city blocks.”
“And swell gowns,” added the teller with a grin. ”

“ PLAZA SAN FRANCISCO, the live stock grain market of Quito, is a colorful, noisy place set in the cold brilliance of mountain sunshine. A babble of bastard Spanish, Aymara and Quichua dialects fill the air. The air is rank with the smell of animal ammonia, straw, droppings, mules and burros. Buyers and venders come and go with strings of donkeys, mules and high-necked llamas. Over the plaza are ponchos of every color, greens, yellows, oranges, reds, stripes, checks and fanciful designs. There is much sombrero tipping and courtly address between all men, rich or beggarly. ”

“ A housewife will ask him to buy her a bar of soap; a girl will entrust him with the matching of a ribbon; a hotel-keeper will order through him a cask of beer; and so on. The courier is busy throughout the day executing his various commissions, now in one shop, now in another; and on the return journey his cart, hung 92 all over with bulky packages and small,—here a chair, there a broom, here a tin of biscuits—resembles a Christmas-tree. The courier's memory must needs be good and his hand steady, for it is the custom to give him at each house as much as he likes to drink. ”

“ And she was followed to the car by a thin shopgirl staggering under an immense white paper armful that looked like a baby in long clothes....
One winter afternoon she had been buying something in a little antique shop in Curzon Street. It was a shop she liked. For one thing, one usually had it to oneself. And then the man who kept it was ridiculously fond of serving her. ”

“ One dealer will have nothing but silk shawls, another nothing but calico prints, a third nothing but fezzes. The business is all divided and dealers in the [123] same line of goods occupy the same quarter and sit cross-legged in their shops waiting for customers. Several hundred merchants are found in each of the bazaars, who pay a small rental to the government and are under the control of a superintendent appointed by the minister of the interior, who is supposed to keep the alleys clean and preserve order. Ladies of wealth seldom go into the bazaars to trade. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. In the back-parlour of a bookseller's shop, between the Strand and the Embankment, three persons sat at tea; the proprietor of the shop, a gray little man with round spectacles and bushy eyebrows, his wife, and a pretty girl of twenty or twenty-one. The girl apparently was a visitor, for she wore her hat, and her jacket lay across the arm of an old horsehair sofa that stood against the wall in the lamp's half shadow; and yet the gray little bookseller and his little Dresden-china wife very evidently made no stranger of her. ”

“ It seems almost impossible that any American goods could, after undergoing such a tremendous carriage, compete with native manufactures, however crude, in Quito, and yet they do. Nearly all the furniture in use in that city is brought from the United States in separate parts and put together on arrival; and in that, the highest and oldest city in America, many people sleep on Grand Rapids beds. The twelve breweries running in Quito import their hops from the United States and Europe, and with railroad facilities American beer, as well as hops, could be liberally sold in Quito. ”

“ Always the same shops, without glass windows, open to all the winds, equally rudimentary whatever may be sold or made in them; whether they display the finest gold lacquer ware, the most marvelous china jars, or old worn-out pots and pans, dried fish, and ragged frippery. All the salesmen are seated on the ground in the midst of their valuable or trumpery merchandise, their legs bared nearly to the waist. And all kinds of queer little trades are carried on under the public gaze, by strangely primitive means, by workmen of the most ingenuous type. ”

“ We turn the corner, dodge a cow and a goat that are being milked in the street, and find ourselves at the entrance door of a dealer in beaten brass and copper goods, Japanese ware, and antiques. This we enter, ignoring the protests of our guide, who would much prefer that our custom should go to the more flashy-looking store farther up the street—kept by his brother or uncle, most likely, and a first-rate house for buying Eastern curios and antiques made in Birmingham. ”

“ She desired to wed a merchant, with a shop of his own, having a little room upstairs over the bazaar so that the good wife might be able to run down and attend to customers between domestic duties. She declared an antique shop would be the best, for one can buy nowadays from the wholesalers such wonderful, not-to-be-detected imitations. ”

“ There are no manufactures whatever carried on in the town, and but little commerce, the merchants of the district being numerically far below those of Cochabamba, La Paz, or even Santa Cruz de la Sierra. In former years the Indians appear to have been well skilled in the art of inlaying in mother-of-pearl and ivory. Many beautiful specimens of this work, in cabinets, crucifixes, and ornaments, can be seen in Sucre, although they are now becoming very scarce, as travellers have nearly exhausted the stocks, and the art seems to have entirely died out. ”

“ The bazaar, down by the river, is full of quaint types 50and most interesting. Its uneven pavement is quite as unclean and slippery with the dirt of ages as are the streets of Constantinople, but its dark little sheds are filled by workers, silver and copper smiths, embroiderers, armourers, weavers, jewellers—in fact, one sees every trade being carried on in the same primitive way and with the same tools as in the Middle Ages. ”

“ Will it be possible that in Quito, so poor and miserable, the great art of making money, which is the spirit and political soul of all cultivated nations, should, provided it be your wish, gentlemen, be established?
“The art of making money, is the art of collecting gold and silver. ”

“ The little shop was dimly lighted—a lurid red glow at one side and a faint amber radiance from above. For a moment I stood looking around uncertainly—at the slovenly display-cases and tables, the unframed paintings on the walls, and the long shelves crowded with curios.
“Perhaps something in particular the señor would wish?” suggested the little old man ingratiatingly. ”

“ In his haste he could think of nothing better than an old onion-loft, some sixty paces up the lane at the back. It was a store merely, not connected with any house, but owned by a rich merchant of the city who had acquired it for some debt and straightway forgotten all about it—at least, so Messer' Fazio declared. If we were discovered in hiding there, it could be explained that we had found it, and used it for a lodging, asking no man's leave; and suspicion would fall on no good citizen. ”

“ And every shop that is not a provision-shop or a clothes-shop or a boot-shop, is a wine-shop—or at least you would think so, until you remember, after you have walked through the street, what a lot of other kinds of shops you have seen on your way. There are shops for newspapers and tobacco, for cheap jewellery, for brushes, for chairs and tables and articles of wood; there are shops with great stacks and piles of crockery; there are shops for cheese and butter and milk—indeed from this one little street in Genoa you could supply every necessary and every luxury of a humble life. ”