I looked at the audience and saw people who'd known Dad when he was young. Some were former library patrons. Others were craftspeople, students, neighbors, and friends. I spotted Nora near the front and Malik beside her. I took a breath and began.
"My father used to say that good furniture should make a room feel like it was waiting for you," I said. "He didn't mean waiting for someone important. He meant anyone who walked through the door."
I explained how he'd built the collection for a neighborhood library and why he'd designed the benches low enough for children to climb onto by themselves. I told the story of the drafting chest and the librarian who needed easier access. I described his belief that craftsmanship was a promise to people who might never know the maker's name.
"For a while," I continued, "I thought protecting these pieces meant keeping them where nobody could touch them or take them away. I had good reasons to feel that way. But the longer I worked on this exhibition, the more I remembered that Dad built them so people could use them."
I looked toward the table. "The wood matters. The joinery matters. The original drawings matter. But most of all, the people matter. If you leave here remembering that somebody designed a room to make strangers feel welcome, then you've understood something essential about Samuel Price."
There was applause, warm and unhurried. I stepped away from the microphone before my voice could fail. Nora hugged me, then Malik, then people I barely remembered from childhood. I spent the next hour answering questions about Dad's techniques, and for once nobody asked what the collection might sell for.
Near the end of the afternoon, a woman approached with a teenage boy who used a wheelchair. She said her grandmother had worked at the Riverlight library and had described the furniture so often that she'd insisted they visit. The boy examined the cedar chest's lowered drawers and asked whether my father had known anyone who used a wheelchair. I told him about the librarian and the modification Dad made after meeting her.
The boy looked at the drawing beside the chest. "He changed the design?"
"Yes."
"Even though he'd already started building it?"
"Yes."
He studied the object for a while. Then he smiled and said, "That's good design."
I nearly laughed and cried at the same time. It was the best review of Dad's work I'd ever heard. No collector's estimate could have given me the same feeling. I thanked him, and he continued through the exhibition with his mother, discussing the furniture as though it still belonged to the living world.