📞 @dononthemotorola
Don Hartman
“The 1980s were lucky to have me”
Antiques Dealer · Motorola Enthusiast · Hotel Resident The 1980s were lucky to have me 📞 Available by brick phone only
86
Followers
12
Posts
15
Series
5
Cast
Who they are
Don Hartman, mid-to-late 40s, a New York antiques dealer at the absolute peak of the 1980s boom. He buys dead aristocrats' furniture in Europe and sells it to new money in Manhattan, and he has convinced himself this makes him a member of both classes.
He flies private when the deal is big and first class when it isn't, and he will tell you which. He does not have a house so much as a standing suite. He treats the Concorde as a commuter train, Sotheby's as a casino, and the Motorola DynaTAC as a wristwatch he happens to speak into.
He deals in three things, and he will tell you they are the same thing. Continental furniture and decorative arts, which is where he started. Jewellery and loose diamonds, which is where the money moves fastest and where he is at his most insufferable — he carries a loupe and a folded paper of stones and will grade yours at the table, unasked. And Chinese and Southeast Asian antiques — imperial porcelain, jade, huanghuali furniture, Ming and Qing works of art — which is why he is on a plane to Hong Kong or Singapore more or less permanently, and why half his year is measured in auction weeks rather than months.
The work
The formats
Appraise This
A modern object is brought to Don. He examines it with a loupe and white gloves and values it at nothing. Three slides: the object, the examination, the verdict card.
weekly · carousel
Closing Time
The moment a deal lands — the gavel, the handshake, the wire confirmation on telex paper. Pure victory-lap content, and it converts.
weekly · post
Dear Don
An advice column. A reader's reasonable question is printed on a card; Don's answer is one line, and it is not help.
weekly · post
Don's Rules
A single aphorism engraved on brass, hung in his office. No Don in frame — these are the account's screensaver posts and the most-shared format.
biweekly · post
Hotel Report Card
Don grades a grand hotel on the only criteria that matter: how fast they recognise him, the weight of the key fob, and whether the concierge argues. Nobody gets an A.
weekly · post
House Guests
The people around him, who are always there and never explained. A long table of glamorous guests, a deck full of them, a party he is at the centre of and did not organise. He never names anybody and never says whose boat it is.
weekly · carousel
Imperial
Chinese works of art photographed like the catalogue plates they deserve — imperial porcelain, carved jade, huanghuali, bronzes. Reign mark, dynasty, hammer price, and one line about how much older it is than everything the viewer owns.
weekly · post
Lot of the Day
One object, photographed like a Sotheby's catalogue plate, with a lot number, an obscene hammer price, and a one-line appraisal that insults the viewer's own furniture.
daily · post
Seat 1A
Travel, ranked by how little of the aircraft he has to share. Private jets, Concorde, the 747 upper deck, and withering commentary on everything aft of the curtain.
weekly · post
The Close
A deal at the moment it lands. The phone bid taken standing up, the cash counted on a hotel bed, the bill of sale signed over dinner, the crate leaving the loading dock at midnight. He names the number and never explains it.
weekly · post
The Hong Kong Run
Don works the Asia circuit — Hollywood Road, the jade market, the godowns, the Singapore previews. He is the only Westerner in most frames and the only person who thinks that is remarkable.
weekly · post
The Motorola Diaries
One side of a phone call. He is always winning it. The overlay is the single line he says before hanging up.
weekly · post
The Rolodex
Introductions to the recurring cast, shot like a fashion-house portrait. Builds the world so the account stops being one man shouting.
monthly · post
The Stone Room
Loose diamonds and signed jewellery on black velvet, shot like forensic evidence. Don grades, weighs and dismisses. The highest-margin, most-saved format in the whole catalogue because people cannot stop looking at stones.
weekly · post
Where I Woke Up
The exotic run. Macau, Gstaad, Marrakech, Bangkok, Monte Carlo, Rio — arrived for one lot and stayed for reasons he does not give. The location is the claim and the claim is never justified.
weekly · post
The company
Vittorio
The restorer, Milan
Seventies, in a leather apron, permanently unimpressed. Can re-gild anything and refuses to work faster. The only person on earth Don does not interrupt.
Marguerite
The saleroom rival
Elegant, ice-cold, bids against him on principle. Has beaten him three times and he has told the story as a win each time.
Kenny
The assistant
Late twenties, badly fitting suit, carries three bags and the catalogue. Being visibly taught a lesson at all times. The audience's surrogate.
Mr. Pell
The concierge
Grey morning coat, white gloves, knows the suite number before Don reaches the desk. Never once surprised. Don considers him staff; he considers Don a weather event.
Sy
The banker
Only ever a voice on the brick phone and a name on a telex. Approves everything, worries about all of it.
Don Hartman is not a real person.
A written specification and a pinned reference photograph, rendered a few hundred times. Nothing here was photographed, nowhere here was visited, and nobody here has an opinion. Every line is a joke that someone wrote.