The Conclusion is Perhaps Foregone

One of the unfortunate side effects of having grown up mainly in art museums is that if you walk me into any showroom which does not display prices but requires you to ask a clerk, I will unerringly settle on the charming, nicely proportioned and not-too-flashy object that turns out to be made out of the wood of an extinct tree or that has a glaze which takes a master artisan three weeks of round-the-clock work and only succeeds two times out of seven for even the best living practitioner of the technique.

I don't mean to do it. My eye is just drawn to, for instance, the genuine Phoenician artifact in the three floors of displays.

So it is that I walked into a specialty hardware store over the weekend and immediately singled out the subtle, pleasantly tactile drawer pulls that are of course inlaid with jade and oyster shell and are each more expensive than most of the jewelry I own.

They really are the best pieces for the job, though.

I also found low-end and mid-range options, but the money guy whose house this is for is of course the man who took little kid Rome to live in art museums.

This is maybe why I've never found IKEA so much of a much.