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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
OK, another chapter on "MY BRILLIANT CAREER"...On a shoe designing trip to Spain, I took a vacation to Morocco.
I fell in love with the souks and bazaars, took loads of pictures
and dreamt of doing a coffee table book on them. Ever practical, I figured I'd better do a European flea market guide first. Since the shoe company was sending me to London, Paris, and Rome, I piggy-backed flea market research onto the shoe trip. The Mediterranean "book" would have to wait.First day out in London's Bermondsey Market, I met a free-lance dealer, Graham, who became my flea market research assistant. What did I know of antiques. The page shown is from a pull-out section for Mademoiselle magazine. Having no typewriter, I hand printed everything...
Grossett & Dunlap saw the Mademoiselle article and asked me to make it into a book. Off I went to design shoes and drag Graham along to explain silver marks and dealer tips in all the flea markets at the same time. 
Here's a spread from the Paris Puce section..
Next I approached Mademoiselle on the souks and bazaars idea. They were thrilled! And a book contract followed from Grosset. I'd earned my street creds and this time I got comped by all the individual tourist offices to do guest travelwriting in their countries - all expenses paid! I got comped to Turkey, Greece, Tunisia, Isreal, Iran. I joined a group of travel agents to eat my fill of pistachios and caviar. Pas mal.
I had no "research assistant" for this project and mostly used my imagination to come up with stories on the flea markets of Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey, Israel, Greece, Yugoslavia, Iran.
The book went to "blues" (the first publishing test run used for correcting errors etc.) But the 1979 Iran hostage crisis put the kybosh on the Med book and it was shelved.
I went on to do a US flea market guide. First for Mademoiselle and then a 3rd book for Grosset. But problems surfaced. I don't like to drive and it became all writing and little drawing. 
I did articles for Art News and others. Even an illustrated column for a travel magazine. I accumulated a lot of antique junk in the process. But time to move on to another career. To be cont. 0 Comments:
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