On The Crush List because…
Some folks go to Disney World, some go to Round Top.
Ender Tasci’s Elephant Walk booth is the streetfront anchor shop for the EX-CESS field, and EX-CESS is pretty much the anchor field for the whole Antiques Show. So Elephant Walk is a hard to miss space, if only as a slow-creep-drive-by-looky-look while you sit in traffic on one of the busy days. I find myself visiting Ender once, twice, maybe three times every show, often helping friends get some truly beautiful things at great prices.
Elephant Walk’s permanent location and warehouse is in Orlando, FL of all places. Which of course got me thinking about how much the Round Top Antiques Show is like a Disney theme park experience: Completely overwhelming visual overload, endless traipsing well beyond your exhaustion point, long hot lines at the casual dining spots, groups of families and friends desperately trying to keep track of one another, parents taking turns pushing strollers, costumed characters everywhere you look… I’ll let you decide which fields are Tomorrowland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, etc. but Warrenton is definitely Main Street USA.
Obviously Ender’s Euro treasures make his space more reminiscent of the Epcot World Showcase than the Magic Kingdom. And speaking of the EWS, don’t you just love the Mitsukoshi Department Store right in the middle of the replica of the Imperial Palace?
This gorgeous beaded tray is a perfect example of how things get away. I saw it two days after I was super-tempted to buy the almost matching beaded stool at a booth down near Zapp Hall. If I’d known the Zapp stool had a matching tray waiting at Ender’s I would have grabbed it for sure, but in the interest of my sanity I’ve instituted a strict a never-go-back rule for myself, so I will be without either.
