Antiques have featured in my life from a young age, with my parents using antique auctions and 'junk shops' since the late 80s/early 90s for everything from wardrobes for the bedrooms through to jewellery and general decor items. I embraced it early on and enjoyed the process of seeing how renovations and restorations can also bring something ramshackle back to usable and decorative.
There are many other reasons we find ourselves drawn to antiques:
- It's an interest, it's always amazing to me to be up close and personal to items that were dreamt, designed, and made centuries ago.
- There's also the good value to be had using these outlets for furnishing and decor. What you get for the money you spend is incomparable to buying new. Particularly, when it's a pretty large item and to get it new would be multiples of multiples of what I paid at auction, for example.
- It's also, by far, a perfect example of environmentally friendly interiors and furnishing. What's better than having a Georgian bookcase serving the same purpose in my home as it was built for originally?
- Then of course, there's the sentimental value associated to items we inherit or receive as gifts. These items are worth more than the monetary value. They remind us of the person, the smells, the memories. These 'things' bring something into our lives and homes that cannot be bought, and to me, that's where the value really lies.
Then there's the ecological side of it all. Fast Fashion is on the lips of so many, but Fast Interior Fashion is just as problematic. I don't mean to generalise here, but the facts are cheaply priced furniture is not made to last, it's using low cost, lesser quality, and often toxic materials. Sometimes ,manufactured using underpaid labour and with poor safety practices. Buying vintage, second hand, antiques, means you can often get quality pieces for a fraction of the price of new. In the past, items were built to last, not for one season of a trend and then discarded. Repairs were done properly and respectfully, because people knew how much the items cost in the first place, and throwing something away was regarded as sinful!
We can all fall for trends and fashions, but I say to look beyond the trends and fast interior fashions. Put value on the quality of materials and workmanship (which goes for new and old!). Let your love for the styles grow and evolve, without putting any thought into 'is this in fashion right now'. When furnishing your home, it's all about you and the people within. It's unique, it's meant to be unique. Unique is not a trend, it's forever! If you fall out of love for something, or it no longer functions as you want it to, then you can sell it, trade it, auction it, pass it on... let the next owner have it as part of their story!
Don't be too precious, all the antiques I've seen, touched, used, have signs of use. They were built and created for use - often very specific uses no longer needed nowadays. Don't save things for 'a special occasion' - often that occasion never happens. I've been to auctions where bottles of highly valued spirits and champagnes and wines were sold for a fraction of their market value, these were all sitting in someone's home and the time eventually came to sell off their estate when they'd passed away. We've bought some of these bottles and they've been consumed, toasting the original owner and how they didn't get the chance themselves. Same goes for a full canteen of bone-handled cutlery I bought at auction. Never used. It must have cost a lot of money when it was originally bought (and I suspect gifted), for it never to have been used saddens me.
Life is for living, the same goes for the things we own: Use them, don't be precious about them. Again, be willing to repurpose items or sell them on if you no longer have a use for them.
Be quirky, be unique. Bring your own flavour and style, be the trendsetter!
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