The Best Ever Letter of Customer Satisfaction

I got an email this morning from Karin and Keith in Springfield, Virginia about their new Phoenix + Flames Sculptural Fire Pit (formerly called “The Great Bowl O’ Fire”). It was so sweet and beautiful it made me all misty-eyed. I get a lot of great feedback, but I rarely get such a detailed and poetic account!

Here is their telling of the first fire in their Phoenix + Flames Sculptural Fire Pit:

Traversing the downward slope of my front yard in a southwest to northeast flanking movement, I met the driver at the rear of his semi as he came around the blind side of his rig. After greeting each other with a hello, the trucker reached for the locking mechanism on the trailer’s rear door and said, “What the hell did you buy?” With such a reaction from him I knew I was about to gaze on something special. As the door began to roll up its guide rails, I told him, “It is a fire pit,” but what was being revealed to us as the metal curtain rose was no mere fire containment system; it was a sculpture, a work of art. Though upside down and secured with jute twine to a shipping palette, we stood for a moment and admired it. Then cutting it free from its bonds we lifted it, sat it down in the road and stood there again marveling at your work. “It’s called The Great Bowl of Fire,” I told the trucker without taking my eyes off of it. “Yes. Yes it is,” was his reply also with his stare locked in place. Finally realizing that more had to be accomplished this day than looking at the beautiful contours of the flames and the Phoenix wings that you cut into the rust patina coated bowl’s thick metal, we grabbed the handles and carried your piece around the house and placed it on the new flagstone patio that the Great Bowl of Fire is now the centerpiece of.

Needless to say Karin, my wife and the driving force in our purchase of your wonderful sculpture, was overjoyed when she got home from work and saw it. We decided then that The Great Bowl of Fire needed to be shared. On the next Saturday, a crisp autumn evening, we had friends over for the inaugural first fire and to share in a big pot of chili, drink hot spiced wine, or cold crisp beers, and toast marshmallows. It was a great celebration that went on until 3:00AM Sunday morning, when we finally put the fire to rest. Your Great Bowl of Fire truly enhanced the festivities that evening.

A spoiled-sport might say that the Great Bowl of Fire would be superfluous to the enjoyment, that people are drawn to fire and would have a good time regardless of what the flames are burning in. But I watched my guests sitting around the Great Bowl of Fire. Their eyes didn’t just look into the flames blazing in middle of the bowl, their sight kept moving following over the edges of the scrolling cuts and watching the interplay between real fire and metal fire; they could envision your Phoenix perform its shadowy rise from out of the flames. It was more than an evening in front of a campfire toasting marshmallows, it was a happening. Your Great Bowl of Fire will be the place to gather in a circle and share in the outer warmth that it will radiate, and in that close knit gathering, inner warmth will also be generated and shared amongst our family and friends.  The Great Bowl of Fire will be the focal-point for many more happenings in our future. Thank you for making such a splendid, fun, and thought provoking object of art.