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The idea of Piermont & Thorne started in 2019, when I was trying to finish my fourth novel.

I had a shaggy plot with a mysterious auction house, cursed antiquities, and a trail of murders. I had the English countryside, a dinner party, and horses thundering across the estate’s front lawn as their stables burned. And then I had nothing; the words wouldn’t come. A week passed into a month, the month extended to half the year.

Sensing the novel was doomed but not yet ready to give up, I did what many writers do: I swapped writing for research. That research led me to an interview with a wealthy collector who said he’d traded hundreds of antiquities but hadn’t seen a single one of his antiquities in person. His assistants bid by phone and his movers transported the items to a climate-controlled warehouse where the items remained until the market determined it was time to sell. The collector’s only exposure to each antiquity was through an image on his laptop.

He was, as he put it, in “the business of trading images.” This got me thinking about NFTs.

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Part of the allure of real-world artifacts and antiquities is the story behind the object, the history that builds an emotional connection to our past. Without the story, a skull is just a skull, an ancient box is just an ancient box. I’ve long been fascinated with artifacts and antiquities; my first novel Gods of Aberdeen was about a coterie of college kids recreating alchemical experiments in search of the elixir vitae, the elixir of immortality, a plot inspired by my own studies of medieval manuscripts and incunabulum. Had NFTs been around during the publication of GOA, I would’ve launched NFTs linked to the novel. NFTs were around in 2019, however, and soon after I abandoned my fourth novel, I realized I still had a story to tell and a new way of telling it.

So I poached some of the abandoned novel’s story elements for a new project: constructing a real auction house with a fictional backstory and filling it with narratively-connected NFT “artifacts.” Every NFT would be part of the world I was building. In other words, no NFT would just be an image of a skull or an ancient box. I envisioned a story whose entrance point was this digital auction house and the items sold therein.

Then, in 2021, I got lucky: one of my former MIT students introduced me to a team of Web3 enthusiasts who needed a writer/idea guy for their tech/videogame startup. I quit my job at MIT, joined the team, and we co-founded a company that planned to use NFTs as digital passports into our game world. Over the next few years I learned a lot, especially how much I didn’t know. NFTs began to make sense. I realized that I was drawn to the illusion of what an NFT is, the “image” of the NFT seeming to be the NFT even though the NFT is just an ownership code that points to the image, often stored far away (at least in digital terms). This reminded me of the antiquities collector, and the images on his laptop pointing to the thing stored far away. Only in reverse.

In 2023, and after a decent run, our startup (as it was) folded. But my auction house idea lingered. Which is how we got to this point.

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The point being a list of my abiding principles for Piermont & Thorne.

1.) Piermont & Thorne will be the premier auction house for NFTs of a certain kind.

P&T blurs the lines between fiction and reality; the illusion is part of the mystery, the mystery is part of the game, the game is part of the appeal. Through NFTs that look like they exist in the real world, with attached narratives that plug into P&T’s occult/fantastical/esoteric vibe, P&T reveals its grand mysteries.

To wit: Our Demon In A Box collection has 66 NFT artifacts that purportedly house a malevolent spirit. Dozens of stories bind them to Piermont & Thorne, to each other, and, in some cases, to the real world. Put differently: P&T and all its native objects are part of the same fictional universe, with tendrils that occasionally extend into other places.

There’s more to it, of course. The objects must seem authentic. The materials must match their descriptions. The recorded age and condition of the objects must be reflected in how they appear. To ensure consistency, accuracy, and verisimilitude, one of my consultants in this adventure is Mr. Chris Barber, a real-world USPAP compliant appraiser who was featured on Antiques Roadshow, worked at Christie’s in NYC, Skinner Auctioneers in Boston, and is now a VP at Doyle Auctions.

Once I create the artifact it goes to Mr. Barber, who approaches it as though it were real. He examines the image, determines the materials, the estimated age, the condition, and any other details that bidders might find important. I have no influence on him during this process: he only reports on what he can discern, ensuring accurate descriptions for each artifact.

2.) All items sold on P&T are unique; every P&T collection is singular.

Once our 66 Boxes are sold out, there will never be another Demon in a Box. The 28 items from our Fragments of Carcosa collection are all that will ever be available. On rare occasions, a collection will be divided into smaller sets, and this will be clearly indicated, e.g. The Sacred and the Unbelievably Profane offers nine unique artifacts as the first set from a collection of eighteen.

3.) Piermont & Thorne will offer appraisals.

This is new territory: professional appraisals of fictional artifacts, mirroring the appraisal process for real-world artifacts. Just as Sotheby’s offers appraisals of items they’re putting up for auction, Piermont & Thorne will offer appraisals for its items. Mr. Barber will conduct and oversee the appraisals, taking into account the craftsmanship, the history behind the item, the provenance of the item, and other factors. We’re also working on inserting what I call “precious metadata” into the NFT that would serve as the digital equivalent of a precious metal. So if we’re selling an NFT of an ancient gold box, I want something in the metadata to reflect the value of that gold, just as the value of a physical ancient gold box is affected by its materials.

Please note that an appraisal is not a guarantee of the final price. Sometimes appraisals are accurate, sometimes the item sells for less, sometimes the item sells for more. P&T will offer appraisals only as a guideline, as our “best educated guess.” The more NFTs sold by P&T, the more comps we have to work with. We anticipate our appraisal services will become more accurate as the business grows, and may become a service for collections outside the P&T brand.

4.) Piermont & Thorne membership will have its benefits.

I’m still working out the details of our “Piermont Preferred” membership, which will require ownership of several P&T auction items. I do know it will bleed into the real world, with free, limited-edition physical merch (when they’re gone, they’re gone) and first-look rights for many upcoming auctions. We also have a limited number of printed catalogs—actual, physical catalogs printed on good stock and bound professionally—for all our collections, and those will be gifted to select auction winners.

Our Discord server will be open to all active participants, whether or not they own a P&T artifact. I want our community buzzing with amateur detectives, internet sleuths, occult scholars, archaeologists, anthropologists, and real-world collectors of artifacts and antiquities. You’ll find references to Carcosa, the Lovecraft mythos, Hollow Earth, Lemuria, and Hyperborea. You’ll find Egyptian curses and primordial gods, lost manuscripts, forbidden codices, and undeciphered texts. Through the artifacts sold on Piermont & Thorne, our community can uncover the full scope of the narrative and can even help build the narrative via their participation.

Think of this community participation as an expanded form of fan fiction. I have no doubt I’ll discover certain NFT owners who’ve immersed themselves in the P&T universe and make our Discord a better place for all. Those owners will be rewarded with exclusive NFTs, limited edition merch, and other perks.

5.) Piermont & Thorne will occasionally slip into the physical world.

The P&T universe is, at its core, a narrative treasure hunt. Or, if you prefer, a rhizome from which multiple narratives sprout. Each story is a treasure hunt of some kind. Sometimes the treasure is the uncovering of mysteries, the revelation of stories. Sometimes the treasure will be actual treasure: riddles and puzzles with real-world rewards, e.g. ETH, physical models of artifacts, and/or exclusive rarities. Sometimes the treasure hunt will only exist in the digital realm, and sometimes it will exist in the real world. Piermont & Thorne has friends all over the world, and the world has plenty of hiding spots.

As a bonus for successful bidders, P&T offers physical certificates of authenticity, issued by mail 2-3 weeks after the auction closes. Our certificates are optional and come at no extra cost.

6.) Piermont & Thorne will not become an OpenSea or any similar clearing house.

OpenSea has their business model and it works exceedingly well for their needs. Notice the planted axiom, however: OpenSea and its ilk are clearing houses.

Piermont & Thorne is synonymous with quality and exclusivity. Using Christie’s and Sotheby’s as examples, the P&T brand should convey excellence, and not just in an artistic sense. Everything sold on P&T becomes a representative of the P&T brand. As such, anything sold under the P&T name must meet our standards.

7.) Piermont & Thorne offers creator-friendly terms for future contributors.

P&T is founded and operated by creators, and we haven’t forgotten where we came from. Art exists for the sake of art, it needs no justification, no apology, and must remain free from censorship of any kind. Taste is our only arbiter: if we love something, we are proud to offer it under the P&T name.

This approach extends to artists who are not part of the P&T narrative universe. One of our tag lines “Artifacts and Rarities of an Unusual Nature” applies to whatever we love, because we love the unusual. Beautiful art—among other traits—is unusual.

As with any real-world auction house, creators retain all rights to their own work. P&T will take a small, negotiable percentage of each initial sale.

8.) Piermont & Thorne does not practice lazy minting.

9.) Piermont & Thorne abides by “small is beautiful.”

Stories can be big and projects can be big and successes can be big, but the scale must remain human. “Small is beautiful” refers to my favorite economist, E.F. Schumacher, who warned against business becoming so big they lose their ability to maintain quality control. We’re here to build a universe, with a business model appropriately scaled.

10.) Piermont & Thorne lives on the Ethereum blockchain, for now and the foreseeable future.

Don’t think we haven’t noticed Solana. Its high throughput, fast transaction speeds, and low fees make sense for big collections. P&T’s auctions are rarely more than twenty NFTs (66 is our cap, as demonstrated in the Demon in a Box collection), so minting costs and speed aren’t much of a consideration.

We mint all our initial NFTs using Manifold Studio. We’re doing this for several reasons: it’s cost-effective, the UI and UX are terrific, and Manifold allows the creator to change some of the metadata, even once the NFT is sold. This is a boon for our concept. In the physical world, new information is often discovered about old things, whether it’s Van Gogh’s self-portrait hidden within another painting or solving the mystery of the Antikythera mechanism. If it happens in the physical world, why not in the digital?

Note: Metadata will only be altered by inserting additional information into the diegetic provenance and/or catalogue notes.

11.) There’s no wrong way to enjoy Piermont & Thorne.

Every NFT sold by P&T is part of a living, story-driven universe. The owners of our NFTs may chose to engage with that story or not, to enjoy the NFT simply for its art, to embark on the grand mystery of Piermont & Thorne, or find their own way to engage with our digital artifacts and rarities.

There’s no wrong way to enjoy Piermont & Thorne—there are only plenty of right ways. We’re honored by your interest, and we hope you join us on this adventure.