Carter Anderson is always full of tall tales—the way you want a Flea vendor to be. Jess learned about the time he sold baby bottles filled with lead paint to 90 cynical, design-hungry New Yorkers, among other tidbits. Dig the new VOTW format?
Name
My name is Carter Wilson Anderson. Goodness gracious, business names. I have gone under Anderson's Audacious Antiques, Big Time Antiques, Demolicious Antiques when I was in L.A., West of Eden, now I'm going under Artifactual. I just got in bed with some friends and we're doing a new website and a new enterprise together and we're here to clock it deep.
Hometown?
Washington, D.C., the city that kills people.
Where do you live?
I live in Alexandria, which is just outside of D.C. and I have a showroom and warehouse in D.C. as well.
How long does it take to get here?
It's about 3 and a half hours if no one wants to go to the bathroom. Three hours 40 minutes maybe, that's doing 75/80 miles per hour.
What do you sell and how long have you been selling it for?
I have been selling for 22 years. Anything from trash to decorative arts. We like to call the good stuff "eye candy." We like to call the stuff that pays for the good stuff "clutter." We try to bring a mix of both up here, make it accessible and bring a little power—you know, get their attention, rock their world.
What's your specialty?
Industrial and Victorian Garden. I like to sell Garden because it attracts beautiful women. And I like to sell Industrial because it attracts gay men and they pay the most for everything.
What's been your most memorable sale?
That's totally easy. In my early 20s I used to sell at the Chelsea flea market on 26th Street. I would leave the nightclub around 1am and get up to Chelsea around 5am. I used to sell a lot of Architectural and pull down a lot of buildings. One time we pulled all the ceiling tin down from this old supermarket and put it on a box truck. When you buy 2-3000 square feet of ceiling tin and you pull it off, you are left with a pile of lead paint chips. That very same week I bought 94 baby bottles from the '20s. So we are sitting around smoking pot (I did that then), trying to figure out what to do with these baby bottles. And we started putting the lead paint chips in the baby bottles, and I thought, You can always sell cynicism and sarcasm in New York. We were selling those paper weights for 40 bucks each. All 90 of them.
What keeps you coming back to the Flea?
Pretty women and I love Eric and it's just a great Flea with a good vibe. We are trying to get our name out here because New York is the best marketplace in America. It's the center of the world, the only city in America.
What do you do for fun?
I skate board—42 years old and I still skate. And I have a beautiful, wonderful kid and I spend as much time with her as I can.
Got a website?
Artifactural is the website [ed.: we're working on this]. We try to come up every couple of weeks, try to keep it fresh and try not to bring up anything more than twice.
Post a comment
Please be patient while your comment is published. It may take a moment.
Previous Month »