The Etagere

The Etagere

          Back in 1990 I was sent to Gulag Toronto.  That’s what I called my two-year tour of duty as CEO of BT Bank of Canada.  I was in exile by my firm for having presided over a sin of omission (as opposed to a sin of commission) wherein a secondary decision that fell under my command was faced with a large credit loss.  It was a collateralized cotton loan to a renowned cotton merchant in Memphis.  The only problem was that the bonded warehouse was in cahoots with the cotton merchant and there was no cotton in the warehouse.  Poof to $125 million in one fell swoop.  The comment by the merchant at recorded by Forbes was, “I treated Bankers Trust like I treated my wives, I told them what they wanted to hear and then I did what I wanted to do.”  Toronto for 2-3 years was my sentence even though the credit had been reviewed by the entire credit staff and the President three weeks prior.  Maybe the reason I survived at all was that review and the desire to keep that little fact quiet.

          This reassignment was hardly a hardship post in any way other than the organizational demotion it represented. I was given a generous expatriate package that included a lovely 2,000 square foot apartment in Toronto in the toniest part of town, an area called Yorkville.  To put a fine point on it, I was across the street from the flagship Four Seasons Hotel, where Izzy Sharp, the Founder of the upscale hotel chain worked.  That apartment needed to be furnished and I was a recently divorced man who was moving from my transitional one-bedroom pad in “the dorms” as we called Battery Park City in those days.  I needed some added furniture to round out the place since I knew as The CEO of the Canadian bank, I would likely have to do some entertaining.

          I called on the wife of a friend who was suffering a dramatic bout of depression.  They lived in Rochester, so relatively close to Toronto.  To be blunt, she needed a break from the burdens of being a full-time caretaker for someone who was unable to get out of bed for twelve weeks.  His father came to take over and she came to Toronto for a weekend of furniture shopping and shaking off the caretaker woes.  We were all good friends so there was nothing strange about the arrangement and the apartment was big enough to comfortably accommodate a guest under those circumstances.  Toronto is an upscale city and had no shortage of nice stores to choose from.  We were on a forced march (the way I pretty much handle all my moves).  We ran around in one day and picked out this that and the next thing with an eclectic blend of styles that all worked nicely together. 

          One of the styles we hit on was the Empire Style, which was first made popular during the reign of Napoleon.  We bought two side chairs and an etagere.  I don’t know what happened to the chairs over the past thirty years, but the etagere is with me and will stay with me for years to come.  It’s a simple piece with a base, three shelves and top piece with one of those hidden drawers in it.  That gives me five surfaces, each with about two square feet of space, on which to place curios and important artifacts I like displaying.  The little hidden drawer is wasted on me since I’ve never found anything important to hide in there.  But the curios have grown over the years to fill every inch of the shelves.

          My curios fall into several categories: Pre-Colombian pumice art pieces and artifacts, stone geodes and fossils, Inuit soapstone art, and a pair of brass Conquistador stirrups from Central America.  These are all special pieces to me. I want to highlight three pieces.  On top I have a large pumice curved legged dish.  This is a piece taken from a 600-year-old grave of some powerful Borucan Indian who was honored with several valuable pieces of functional but artistic stone, pottery and metal.  This is one of three big pumice (from one of the two active volcanos in Costa Rica) pieces, the others being a full-sized head and an eighteen-inch-high female statue.  Most of these were excavated in large burial grounds near Puntarenas that were not restricted in 1959 when we gathered them.  Today, none of these sorts of pieces can leave Costa Rica.

          The Inuit statues were all collected during my two-year stint in Canada.  My favorite is a large and heavy green soapstone bear that is standing in a position that makes him look like he’s bogeying to the beat.  He looks menacing, but fun, not a bad combination in business.  The other pieces include a loon, rhino, a small whale and running bear.  I lost my windblown musk ox to my second divorce.  The array of chambered nautiluses, geodes and specimen stones were gathered from my global travels over the years.

          Perhaps my favorite pieces are my brass tooled Conquistador stirrups.  These look like little Arabian curled-toe slippers into which Spaniard soldiers would place their feet so that the brush wouldn’t damage their shoes or feet.  The interesting thing is that they look to be about a size six shoe might fit into them.  I guess the Conquistadores had small feet.

          While each piece on these shelves is a personal treasure, it is the etagere itself which captures my imagination for some reason.  Important curios can get lost in the shuffle of knick-knacks in any home.  Special items need a special place to highlight them.  My etagere means a great deal to me because it has been with me through eight moves now and has seen a lot of change.  My etagere holds my dearest memories going back sixty years.  I care not about the monetary value of any of it.  What I care about is the ability to enjoy these pieces as I sit in my living room and ponder the world and the changes swirling around us.  I like being able to easily share these special items with visitors, but only if they notice them and ask.  These are my and eventually my kids’ special treasurers.  They were gathered more than bought.  They tell a story of an eclectic life held in an equally eclectic etagere.