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Actually you can. The crafts required live on. People in Europe and the U.S. still build paneled rooms and beveled-glass entryways. They have, in fact, built a good many of the lots in this auction. At the back of the hall Marty Duffy of Ely, Iowa, and Roger Wandrey of Portland, Ore., watch in bemused silence as the intricate glass clusters and stained-glass domes that they made are sold. So do not weep for the little old lady whose oak-paneled inglenook — so cozy with a gin and bitters— is now going to be part of a restaurant theme. The inglenook was probably put together from remnants and refimshed. "What a piece!" shouts an auctioneer, as a Gothic pulpit is wheeled up. "Put a disco jockey in that and you've really got something." Not only instant restaurant, but instant imagination.
Which is not to say, not at all, that John Wilson is trying to fool anybody. If a paneled room with baronial fireplace happens to be from London's Barclays Bank, he says so, and an Oklahoma City developer is pleased indeed to buy it for $32,500. But at a preview Wilson has also eagerly explained that a particular "pub" was actually taken from a church and rearranged. "We embellish, combine, try to keep the period," he says.
Chris Mortenson, 31, who develops land in Montana and San Diego, buys one of the auction's truly great pieces, a stained-glass dome originally made for a San Francisco Elks' hall. He pays $90,000 but has no special plans for its use.
Hugh and Judith Marshall, a young couple from Houston, acquire the entire interior of the Mappin and Webbs Jewelry Store in England for $70,000. Marshall is in the oil business in Calgary, owns a jewelry store there, and plans to open one in Houston. The Marshalls also buy two general-store interiors they plan to put on their farm outside Houston as a sort of produce stand. Singer Dick Clark buys an entire pub. Two local housewives, seized by pure impulse, acquire a drug store interior for $11,000.
Evan Blum, 25, of Irreplaceable Artifacts in New York City, came to watch. He already owns a part of the façade of the old Chicago Stock Exchange and the cornice of Manhattan's Commodore Hotel. He suggests people start saving, for future investment, early formica tabletops "with the pink-and-gray blob design."
Even as the theme-artifact market was booming, another restaurant trend was developing. That day, of the two most In restaurants in Los Angeles, one was operating without a sign of identification, the other with an unlisted phone number. In both, the decor could only be called early tool shed.
— Jane O'Reilly