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Discover Mid-America — August 2006
How snooty can we get?
Recently, there appeared yet another trade journal editorial lamenting the lack of precision in use of the term "antiques." This particular editorial had been inspired by the editor's interaction with a consumer in his 30s, the son of an antique dealer.
Having visited one too many just-off-the-interstate antique malls of late, the young man asked why on earth anyone would want to buy "that stuff," which he summarily dismissed as "worse than the junk we throw away." The editor took this as a comment on the age of the goods being offered and wrote recommending stricter segmentation in the trade — you know, where all the antiques get to live together, apart from the riffraff of collectibles and repros — so as to avoid "confusing" customers about what constitutes a genuine antique.
Beg to differ, but I don't think the consumer in this instance was confused at all. Being the son of a dealer, he could be expected to have a better-than-average grasp of what constitutes a genuine "antique." The very fact that he was shopping antique malls at all says that he had some hopes for the experience that differ from those he might carry with him to a big-box retail outlet. No, his was a commentary on the quality of the merchandise, not its age.
Is purism in the antiques trade bankrupt?
Keeping our eye on quality, there is no such thing as some arbitrary century line separating "the antiques" from everything else. As suggested in a previous Good Eye column, those who think they can cut the 20th century entirely out of their dealings will find it hard indeed to turn down the crowning glories of that century: Tiffany glass, Rookwood pottery, Wedgwood Fairyland Lustre, paintings by Luigi Lucioni and so on.
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| This Rookwood paperweight, 3.5 inches long and done in a brown glaze, dates from late in Rookwood's production period, c1964. Even so, I doubt that a multi-dealer shop owner, seeing the Rookwood mark, would insist upon consigning it to some out-of-the-way corner of the store reserved for newer items. In any event, that's not where I found it — it was displayed eye-level on the shelf of a locked and well-lit case in the front of the store. [photo by the author from her own collection] |
Some high-end shops have tried to keep 20th century merchandise to one corner of the building, but that, too, is a doomed enterprise. Such proprietors still carry late production merchandise throughout their shops, and they aren't about to consign highly sought 20th century art glass, for instance, to some poor-relations corner of the building. The confusion, then, is less in the mind of the consumer than it is in the trade itself, with its endless, insular and ultimately illogical efforts to cordon off one century's end from another's beginning.
In the same journals advocating the purist approach, one can find display ads for furniture "reproductions," ads that have to be read very carefully for a consumer to realize that the items being sold aren't original. "Museum-Quality Handcrafted Eighteenth Century Furnishings," a headline declares from one of these ads, obviously meant to gloss the age difference between the 21st century reproductions the ad sells and 18th century originals.
So who's trying to confuse whom?
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| This model, aptly named "Honey Lickers," was among the very first Lladru models purchased when I first began collecting it. Artists can appreciate the multiple triangulation in the figure, and anyone at all can appreciate the whimsy of the pup at lower left, who is more intrigued by the little girl's big toe than by the honey pot on which the other two are so intent, Note also the smile on the little girl's face — that smile of childhood evoked by the joy of doing something deliciously elicit. The Spanish word miel (honey) is painted on the side of the pot. The magnificent balance and attention to detail in this figure is an example of what drew me to Lladru. After that came an interest in the fine detailing in antique Asian polychrome porcelain, the one interest seeming to lead inexorably to the other. [photo by the author from her own collection] |
Missed opportunities with younger consumers?
In working up to an interest in antiques, the average 20- or 30-something is not going to ramp up from zero to 18th century. No, he or she will start with something nearer to home; over time, that interest will trigger other collecting interests in items more properly identified as "antique." Purists risk losing an entire generation of potential consumers as long as they're unwilling to engage younger customers in this natural progression of interest. When I started collecting as a relatively young consumer, I chose Lladru Spanish porcelain. So okay, it wasn't old, but I could see it was quality.
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| Pair of miniature hexagonal-shaped garden seats, Chinese export, early to mid-19th century, with pierced cash tops. Yellow ground in over-glaze enamel paint with polychrome flower and scroll accents, and some minor "wear" in the paint consistent with the age of these items. Hexagonal medallions are, on one seat, painted in floral sprays (iris, wisteria, plum blossoms, etc.), with insects on the other (dragon fly, cricket, cicada, etc.). [photo by the author from her own collection.] |
As it turned out, an attraction to fine detail, first cultivated through my exposure to Lladru, became a hallmark of my later collecting habits and led me to broader, and older, interests in the porcelain medium. Today, I have a modest but respectable collection of antique Asian polychrome porcelains (Chinese and Japanese). Connecting the dots of my interest, I get a direct line from the detailed modeling in Lladru to the detailed painting in the best of my Asian porcelain collection. I'm quite sure I would not have developed the latter interest had it not been for the former — purchased, by the way, mostly from antique shops not too stodgy to carry it.
Porcelain, however, is a traditional antiques category. Many young consumers will start with something that purists, with a sniff of the upturned nose, would say more properly belongs to the "collectibles" segment. My nephew is bonkers for the original Transformer toys, and he's just as passionate about them as I am about my Asian porcelain. But he's also fascinated by medieval history. He's assembled a small personal library on the topic, and he's savvy enough to prefer first edition classics in medieval history.
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| Close-up of dragonfly painting from one panel of an unusual miniature garden seat. The diminutive size (5 inches tall and 4 inches wide) would have made these purely decorative, functional garden seats being approximately 19" high. Sandra Andacht and Mark Moran's 2nd edition of Oriental Antiques & Art (Krause Publications, 2003) lists one 9-inch miniature garden seat of similar description, valued in a range of $1250-$1800 — the only other reference I was able to find to a miniature version of the popular Chinese garden seat, which is normally large enough for a person to sit on. [photo by the author from her own collection.] |
These examples debunk the myth that younger consumers don't collect. It's just they don't collect what purists want them to collect — or else they come to the trade by a more circuitous route than a rigid purism is comfortable accommodating.
Maybe the current state of the trade isn't so bad after all
A good approach to self-regulation in the trade would focus on vetting the quality, whatever the century in which it was produced, and getting rid of the trash. That degree of self-regulation alone would revolutionize the trade — and would give younger consumers something to shop about.
But even in saying that much, I feel a twinge of ambivalence. Maybe the status quo's not so bad after all. There should be enough strictly high-end venues in the trade to keep purists happy. For the rest of the trade, one might still wish mall dealers would get rid of the obvious debris, selling it at yard sales or flea markets or thrift stores or swap meets or any other venue more appropriate than a shop that has "antique" in its signage.
Still, if the entire trade looked like the show rooms at Christie's or Sotheby's — and charged an equivalent freight as the financial and cultural price of admission...well, heck, wouldn't that just take all the fun out of the field for those of us with champagne tastes but a beer income?
Peggy Whiteneck is a writer and collector living in East Randolph, VT. If you would like to suggest a topic she can address in her column, email her at allwrite@sover.net.
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