Agent Provocateur

"When Jason Jacques was twenty-eight years old," writes Adamson, "he showed up at the Triple Pier Expo in New York with a U-Haul trailer full of pots. He had not previously arranged for a booth; he had just moved back to the United States after five years in europe. It was all rather last-minute. But he talked his way into a little stretch of wall by the bathrooms, and set up two display cases of art nouveau ceramics. Then he walked around the show, buying up every other pot of that era he could find. He wanted, he says, to 'empty the floor' [...]"