I have what you need.

I don't understand.
Feeling adven- turous, I clicked on an ad at nymag.com. (I was looking a business up, okay?) It was for a furniture and accessories store I hadn't heard of...or had forgotten from another life. This purveyor of fine furniture has some of the most amazing traditional fake old fancy tchatkes (for the modern day Marie Antoinette?) I have ever, ever seen. And I have been to an awful lot of furniture show rooms in my time. Really spectacularly tacky, expensive objects like this. And this. And this! One part of me wants to buy it all, bad! It is such a relief from the spare cold modernism we are told is the only expression of "contemporary" living. But then again, isn't Horchow just weird worthless furniture for rich republicans?

I can get my head around the appeal of thousands of glinting crystals, and gilded milled bed posts as thick as your thigh--but the image above represents something much more mysterious; it an object whose capital, value, and purpose I do not begin to understand. The values that the bed, light, etc. are designed to convey, however grotesque and ornate and desperate they seems, are obvious. Tradition, wealth, conservative ideals, "I'm an old lady": all these sentiments are clearly communicated. What's more, those pieces have some sort of utility.

But what is that a pair of in the picture? Why, it's a "Parisian Dormer Window Frame."

Parisian lucarne (dormer window) frame is made of metal with a worn matte patina. Frame has small gaps and spaces between seams due to age and weathering. Sold individually. Measures 18.75"W x 13"D x 35"T. Made in France. Sold individually, originally $3,100.00, now $2,479.90

Was it aged and weathered in France, perhaps on a building for 300 years? Or was it aged and weathered in a shipping yard in France for 6 months after being fabricated in Malaysia? Did it ever hold glass? Can it still? Is it an indoor or outdoor decoration? Most importantly, what will the girls in your bridge club think when you slap this rusted piece of shit on your wall? I guess you're supposed to keep the price tag on and in prominent view.