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Discover Mid-America — May 2006
 |
The conceptual aspect
of antiques
by Bruce Rodgers, Editor/Publisher
Last month’s cover story, “Shabby Chic and Primitives, Beauty captured in imperfection,” and this month’s cover story “Antiques in My Garden” — both by Blue Springs, MO writer Terri Baumgardner — seem to have struck a cord with a few of our advertisers.
If one considers more than just the history and value of a single antique item, then it’s not surprising that her writing drew attention. Both articles, which were her editorial ideas, go beyond viewing an antique piece as only contained within itself.
I’m going to take a leap here: Let me suggest that looking at antiques as separate items, with a history and value, is more of a masculine approach. Many men view a thing as within itself, embellished with facts about where it came from or how it was made, speculation as to whom may have owned it, and a notion what it may be worth now and in the future.
Women, on the other hand — a majority of our readers and many shop owners and mall managers, I may add — can take a single item and seek to place it in a larger context. That view begins with the subjective, determining a thing’s beauty in the viewer’s mind.
The beauty of an antique may be strikingly evident at first glance. Or it could be that the beauty has to be coaxed out somewhat. Bringing that beauty out means placement within an environment — with other antiques or not — that can reveal a concept. That concept, whether defined or not, is what decorating your home or garden with antiques is all about.
Where men may situate an antique in full view as a sort of trophy to talk about, women bring an object into the environment as a fixture of beauty among other things of beauty. Call it interior design, if you like.
But as Rebecca Connolly notes in her article for HomeWorks Sourcebook (www.homeworkssourcebook.com), “Antiquing is as intuitive as any art…that decorating with antiques often relies more on love-at-first-sight obsessions rather than calculated research and documented pedigree.”
She has a point. Some of the most warm and inviting shops or booths in malls were not built to a calculated design. Some, as in one’s home, which Connolly notes should “not be viewed like a museum,” show an evolution of décor. As Connolly writes, antiques are “pursued and discovered” in comparison to the instant shopping convenience in mass-marketed home furnishings catalogs.
Decorating with antiques should be an achievement of finding comfort through creativity, where the appeal of your surroundings reflects your taste and creative priorities.
Being conceptual with antiques in designing one’s home or shop environment is more easily experienced once completed than writing about as a guide to make it happen. Still, we have other ideas concerning what can be called “decorating with antiques” that we hope Baumgardner will research and write about for Discover.
Meanwhile, we welcome your ideas, as always.
Bruce Rodgers can be contacted at publisher@discoverypub.com.
> Editor’s Notebook Archive — past columns