Faux Permit

About This Exhibit

This scroll is a fictional vending permit, conceived as an artifact from the imagined world of a short story I was writing. The story's protagonist was a fruit vendor working in an open-air market on another world, and I imagined that even within this somewhat medieval culture, participation in the market would require official authorization. The piece began as an exercise in transforming an inexpensive pine box into something that might plausibly serve as a valued civic or commercial artifact within that imagined society.

The scroll is housed in an engraved pine case finished in a black-to-red gradient, with gold leaf applied to the lettering and decorative elements. Inside, the document takes the form of an accordion-folded scroll with leather covers at the top and bottom, finished to match the case with the same gradient, lettering, and gold leaf. Together, the case and document are intended to suggest an object that is both functional and ceremonial—a small piece of material culture from a world that exists primarily in fiction.