", an iron cooking device, in the family room fireplace? That she trades in heirloom chateau linens and silver bought directly from old French families? Or that a current fancy is baking breads started with living cultures of fermented fruits?"

"Ms. Dowd may live in a fast-food nation, but she doesn't let a little snag like reality intrude on her world of slow food, family meals, heirloom possessions, refined manners and old-world niceties. Although she was born and reared a Southerner in Memphis, Tenn., Ms. Dowd considers her French mother's native culture even more genteel ? and worth emulating. On her buying trips to France, far removed from the fashionable streets of Paris, Ms. Dowd is certain to rent rooms for her stay that include at least a cookstove if not a full kitchen. After her day's formal calls to acquire inventory, she prepares a supper of duck, fresh fish or goose liver, interesting vegetables, bread and regional cheeses she bought that morning at a village market and pretends that's her day-to-day life."

"When she's back home in Dallas, Ms. Dowd, a wife and mother, goes to considerable effort to simulate the local-food experience that is a way of life in the Perigord. She thinks nothing of the daily marketing that takes her to one store for parbaked, frozen baguettes, another store for organic vegetables, an Asian market for seasonal berries and a second-generation Italian grocer for the "best truffle cheese in the city.""

""I wake up every day and think about the three meals I'm going to have," says Ms. Dowd. "I had a French mother who loved to cook and who exposed me to wonderful food my whole life. The food is what the core is for me. It's not hard for me to be passionate about what I'm selling.""

"Antique Harvest, founded in 1997, is an online source for French antiques used for everyday living and entertaining in the realms of the kitchen, dining room, bedroom and bath. Not peasant living, though. Ms. Dowd's inventory comes from chateaux, manoirs and "very fine farmhouses" and dates as far back as the 18th century. ("The French government doesn't want things older than that leaving the country.")"

"She procures hand-embroidered (by nuns) linen sheets, tablecloths, napkins and pillowcases; antique silver flatware and table accessories; chateau and farm bells of iron; and rare collectibles for the kitchen, such as duck and butter presses, baguette-slice toasters and a contraption that latches onto a kitchen tabletop to swab out wine bottles for reuse. Recently she has intensified her search for grilling implements and wine accessories."

""These are things you can't buy new," she explains. "They don't make them anymore.""

"Ms. Dowd developed her 9-year-old niche boutique business out of need ? the need to connect with her heritage, to infuse her family life with the same home-centered rituals she experienced as a child and to nurture appreciation for family legacies in her son, who's less than a year away from leaving home."

"Her late mother, says Ms. Dowd, was an extraordinary cook with an eye for presentation. Her maternal grandfather was in the linen business in France, and her paternal grandfather founded a pasta company in the United States after emigrating from Sicily."

"In addition to the deep familial connections her business represents, Ms. Dowd readily acknowledges pure sensory delight in the goods she acquires and sells. She's convinced there are plenty of potential customers ? men and women ? who share her appreciation for the relics of a genteel existence, be they born to it or not. And thanks to the Internet, the Web (antiqueharvest.com) and search engines such as Google, the entrepreneur snags clients from around the world. For her local customers, she maintains a booth at an antiques market and shows by appointment."

""They revel in the fact that these pieces have a story, and they want to add their story to them," says Ms. Dowd. "They want to gather pieces from all over the world that "

" something, not instant decoration. My customer isn't one who's acquiring things that are pretty. She wants a piece of silver to add her own fingerprints to it.""

"A Frenchwoman's home-keeping skills, no matter her station in life, were the measure by which she was judged a suitable marriage prospect and, later, a wife. "The French have an aesthetic for the table and the bed that hasn't been matched," the businesswoman says. "Linens were a woman's dowry, a woman's worth, what she represented to the marriage. So she began accumulating them at age 6 or 7.""

"France is the world's major flax producer, from which linen is made, and it is deemed the best quality. The very best, Ms. Dowd has learned, is grown in Caux, on deposits of calcium carbonate. There the flax flowers are a vivid blue, and the bluer the flower, it turns out, the stronger the flax's fibers."

"Linen becomes softer with washing while retaining its strength and shape, useful characteristics for objects subjected to frequent launderings. Modern flax fibers are not as durable. And "the feel of old linen against your skin is like nothing else. If you've never slept in a bed with real linens, you're missing out on one of the great pleasures in life.""

"The caress of heirloom linen and the beauty of the handwork are equally valued among Antique Harvest's clientele. "If the handwork wasn't done by nuns, the linen maids did it. And that era is gone.""

"Extravagantly florid monograms may boast initials seven inches in length. So-called "duchess" napkins are 43 inches by 35 inches, and bedsheets are 95 inches wide."

"Beginning in the 14th century, initials were stamped on household cloths using a homemade red, indelible ink. Later, tiny initials stitched in red threads replaced the stamped identification, a necessary labeling device when wives or maids took the family linens to the river bank or village square's fountain for communal wash day."

""In France, red is the symbol of the blood of life," she explains, "which is why the
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