Street Markets

Another chapter of "MY BRILLIANT CAREER". Did you see that Australian movie or read the book? On a shoe designing trip to Spain, I went to Morocco. I fell hard for the souks and bazaars and dreamed of doing a coffee table book. Always practical, I figured I’d do a European flea market guide 1st. My shoe company sent me to London, Paris, Rome so I piggy-backed on flea market research. First day in London's Bermondsey Market, I met darling Graham, a free-lance antique dealer. He became my new flea market assistant. What did I know of antiques? The illo above was for Mademoiselle magazine. I had no typewriter so I hand-printed everything —sheer hell for my editor.

Grossett & Dunlap saw the Mademoiselle article and asked me to turn it into a book. I went off to design shoes with Graham along to explain silver marks and dealer tips in the weekend flea markets.

Here's a spread from the Paris Puce section..

Next I approached Mademoiselle on the souks and bazaars idea. They were thrilled. A book contract followed from Grosset. I'd earned my street market creds. This time I was comped by tourist offices as a guest travelwriter in their countries - all expenses paid. I was comped in Turkey, Greece, Tunisia, Isreal. In 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. Instead I used my imagination to come up with stories on the souks of Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey, Israel, Greece, Yugoslavia, Iran. I did have terrific help from Abrams book designer, Robert McKee (we met in an SVA graphic design class).
The book went to "blues" (the first publishing test run used for correcting errors etc.) But the Iran hostage crisis caused the Med book to be shelved. 

A US flea market guide was proposed next. First for Mademoiselle and then a 3rd book for Grosset. But problems surfaced. I don't drive. And it became all writing and little drawing.

Articles for Art News and others followed. Plus 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.