Charbonnet, who calls the New Orleans Auction galleries "sparkly," says, "it's always fun there because you're likely to find yourself in a bidding war with a celebrity." Mike Vidos acknowledges that Martha Stewart is a regular client, and Delta Burke has a house in the neighborhood and is a frequent visitor. Charbonnet also mentions the Vidoses' parties, held nearby in their 1847 house, which belonged to southern writer Grace King, a friend and correspondent of Mark Twain's. "So often in life you anticipate something and then you're disappointed with the reality - that's not so with Jean's antebellum-style parties in her antebellum house."

Jean Vidos says, "We sell great pieces to really interesting clients; you meet people from every walk of life, and bringing them and the objects together is the perfect way to entertain. You end up being friends, and that's the advantage of running a regional auction house."

Finally, Charbonnet eases back home, so to speak, and stops at WM 19^th Century Antiques on Royal Street in the Vieux Carre. Doris Mollenkopf, who owns the shop with her husband, Jeffery Witte, says, "The outstanding characteristic of New Orleans is the architecture - the good, the bad and the ugly, they're all jumbled together." This, combined with the city's reputation for fine antiques, is what lured the couple there from Pennsylvania, where they had had an antiques business for seventeen years. Their shop, located in a typical nineteenth-century building, incorporates all of their interests.

"Doris and her husband have late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century English and American furniture and decorative arts, but they have unusual examples," comments Charbonnet.

New Orleans native Charbonnet has also seen find examples of this favorite Old Paris porcelain there. "Old Paris porcelain was made with a particular mix of clays," says Mollenkopf, "in various factories around Paris from the late eighteenth century until late in the nineteenth century. It had a nice shiny glaze; and they made figures in classical shapes as well as pieces for export, such as figures of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Jacob Petit was one maker of this porcelain who acquired his own factory in 1830, which went on into the Victorian era. Signed Jacob Petit pieces have a 'JP' in blue on the bottom."

Charbonnet, who calls Jacob Petit "a master," says, "I purchased my own dinnerware from WM Antiques. It's white with an apple-green border, and it's a rare example of Old Paris work."