Presentation is about creating desire

Across the road from 1800 North American Street in Philadelphia is Provenance. Provenance are a for-profit recovered timber dealer who have developed a highly honed method to collect, process and sell timber as well as good condition architectural features.

They have developed relationships with Philadelphia’s deconstruction contractors to recover heritage timber, reprocess it and present it in their warehouse looking as if it were in a large builders’ merchants store. All timber is cleaned, de-nailed, ends trimmed, stacked, filleted and packeted to look as it it were brand new timber.

The Provenance warehouse is immaculately tidy, there is no junk or sawdust anywhere. All the timber is merchandised like a retail store. Store Manager Brian tells me that they have built a reputation for providing timber for furniture makers and designers all over the world with timber exported as far away as Dubai.

The other half of their warehouse is devoted to retailing “architectural gems and furniture of unique origin”. There’s no junk here, just the good stuff that creates curiosity and desire.