The Balcony View

I am often amazed there are any iron balconies left on any building in France or Italy. They've all been made into consol tables!  In the 1980's there used to be a three storey warehouse close to Clignancourt, in the North of Paris, run buy an elderly, rag and bone man in a dirty flat cap. His name was Aldo. He rarely showed any emotion. He'd never tolerate a bid on anything. But he was fond of me. The top floor was crammed with crucifixes and candlesticks from abandoned churches, bronzes and deep stacks of gilt mirrors. Second floor was lined with iron pots in ones and twos, fours and sixes. Ground floor was lined with hundreds of iron balconies. They were never symmetrical, but if you bought a pair, a clever balcksmith back in Sussex, could weld them together, sandblast and burnish them and represent them as shiny iron consol tables. 

 Aldo was always my last call on a Friday morning, on my way back to the airport. The taxi drivers hated going there as it was in the heart of a really dodgy banlieu. They'd keep their engines running as Aldo greeted Monsieur Spencer. He got to understand my taste for crusty paint on iron urns and each week would save a pair or two of them in pale blue or mossy green, always behind a curtain in his office and unveiled with theatrical pride.There was a constant queue of builders vans in the drive to his old warehouse down by the rail tracks, heading North out of Paris. Once or twice a year I'd go and everything in the place would be festooned with American dealers stickers and tags. I remember the imaginatively names Great Things from Carmel would buy everything bar the floorboards.