My alter ego, Franz66, manifested as a result of my childhood's annual summer vacations driving through the rural landscapes of upstate New York and being taken to antique stores by my parents. We had an old barber's chair in our tv room and would spin each other around and around - as fast as we could - in it. One day, as I was losing oxygen and becoming lost in the blurs as they sped by in 360 degrees of dizziness, I suddenly started seeing the world as a superbly distinguished Prussian gentleman in a top hat, tails and pince nez; the wall my father wallpapered with faded pages from an old Sears catalogue came to a standstill and I thought I was an aristocrat.

Since then this alter ego has guided me to have an appreciation for the past he has lost, and what would have been his future: all things of Modernity are of interest to him, all things Victorian, Edwardian, the Jazz Age, the Atomic Age and the Disco Generation. As he always reminds me, we cannot see where we're going unless we know where we have been. I believe that, in many ways, we are the things we create... we are the design we manifest. We are always changing. Like an archeologist, like a museum curator, and like someone who has their own interests and leanings - her (and his) own history - I am drawn to certain things, especially old photographs. I believe the things we leave behind carry parts of us forward: re-use, re-purpose, re-cycle. Remember. Every object has someone waiting to find it and appreciate it again. These are the things that motivate me with my Etsy shop.