In my shop, people have asked me upon occasion, why do you like antiques, when did you start liking antiques, or have you always liked them.
It did make me wonder. My parents didn’t like them. My mother said she had lived through the depression and she never wanted OLD again. They always had new and as soon as it looked worn in any way, out it went and was replaced by newer! So where did I get this love of vintage items?
My mother was a stern woman. We were never allowed to go into her pocketbook or in her jewelry box. My mother was raised by an older sister. Her mother died when she was three and her parents were both dead by the time she was eleven.
So my Aunt Marge was the closest to a grandmother that I ever knew. Well, we could rummage through anything she owned!
One day while I was scavenging through her pocketbook, I pulled out a gorgeous lace handkerchief, heavy enough that I knew something was in it. I carefully unfolded it and unwrapped what looked like diamonds and saffires.
“Oh, Aunt Margie, what are these?” My Aunt Marge , I must tell you was the first woman and the first gentile on the Philadelphia Board of Realtors. She was a career woman before there was that term. She looked at what I had in my hand and said “Oh, honey, those are dress clips. If you are at work and a gentleman asks you out for cocktails, you slip off your suit coat, put those dress clips at the corners of your silk blouse and you are dressed for cocktails.”
Well, I was hooked!! It was every movie star I had ever heard of!!
It was Joan Crawford and Doris Day!! What could be more romantic?
That small event may be MY reason why I like old things.
Maybe we all like history of the old things; I wish things could tell me their stories. Where have you been? Who owned you?
My husband and I were at an auction once when I bid on a three drawer cardboard chest. I had seen that it was full of sewing items, so I knew that if it went cheap, I would have fun finding buttons, maybe a darning egg or knitting needles—all stuff I like.
It went for a pittance, because after all it was a cardboard 3 drawer chest! I took it to my shop and had a wonderful time finding interesting loose buttons, rick rack, collar stays—just fun old sewing stuff. But in the bottom drawer, way in the back was something shiny. At first I though it was a coin, but as I pulled on it it got bigger and bigger! By the time I got it out and measured it and examined it from every angle, I found out that, there in the back of someone’s sewing box, perhaps to be pulled out when no one was home but her, was an honest-to-goodness belly dancing belt! That one has given me pause for thougth for a long time.
You see, I don’t think it has to be Civil War History to be interesting HISTORY!
May be it’s the evocative nature of antiques that is the draw.
I can see the beauty of things from the 1700’s and 1800’s, of course. But the items that are the contemporaries of your parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents are the most evocative items to me. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard “Gosh. My aunt so and so had one of those. I had forgotten all about it!” or “I haven’t seen that since my grandparents were alive.”
I lived in California when I was 10 and my dad was sent overseas for a short time. When he came home I was playing in a little rubber tent we had, in the back yard. There was much excitement and happiness at this return.
He told us everything he could remember that he thought might interest us. He brought us all gifts and we had drawn him pictures and written cards as his gifts from us. I didn’t open the one box he had for me, instead, when it got calm and quiet, I took it back to my tent to unwrap it.
It was a lithopane tea set and to this day, I can turn those tea cups up to see the Japanese woman in the bottom and smell the humid, rubbery smell of he inside of that tent and remember our mutual joy that our dad was home again.
I was going to Barney, GA once to look at an estate to buy. I looked in each room and there were quite a few nice items. As I entered one room where these women had laid out toys and clothes and books, it was as if there was only ONE ITEM in the room. There, in the corner, was a 3’ tall cloth doll with a plastic face and a little hat with elastic straps sewn to here feet and her hands. Until I laid eyes on her I didn’t even know there was a memory for her, but I remembered that I had danced with her hundreds of miles. She was probably just my height then and when I strapped those bands on my hands and feet, that doll knew all my steps!
The house I live in now was built in the 19 teens. I purchased it within months of moving to Georgia. My daughter, Jennifer, was a teenager and as
girls will, had a best friend already. Jennifer’s best friend was named Chuck, well, really Charlene, but we all called her Chuck.
I was so proud of my wonderful new, old house! “ Well, Chuck, what do you think?” I asked this of everyone who came in—I told you I was PROUD of my new house!! Chuck said “ like the house, but it smells old and maybe a little musty.” All I could think, was—and she is saying it like this is a bad thing! How odd!!
My Aunt Marge had a big, old 3 story house in Philadelphia that had a basement. My sister and I spent hours in that basement. It had an Edison talking machine that played, not flat records but black, plastic tubes. I can still tell you that the one we played the most often told us in a very deep bass voice, that “Many a brave soul lies asleep in the deep, so BEWARE!”
There was a grand trunk with lots of clothes and linen and a carricole coat that spread around us in a black fur puddle on the floor and weighed more than my sister and me combined. And then there was that wonderful smell!!
That wonderful, musty, old smell still smells like treasure to me!
Maybe the draw towards old things is the monetary one. Old things are worth more than new ones.
My dad was in the Navy for 30 years. I don’t know about now, but back then they had thrift shops, Treasures in Trash stores. I liked to scout these out wherever we moved. I started out by buying cheap gifts from Treasures in Trash for family. Wow, did I know a secret!! But when later on seeing the same items in antique shops, I discovered a life long process. I bought from the T n T shops and sold to antique stores everywhere we would moved! It was so easy—certainly easier than baby sitting for 3 kids who locked you out of the house while earning 50 cents an hour! Why didn’t everyone know about this!?!?
And in today’s throw away society, old things are especially more valuable than new. People are surprised to find, “wow, it’s 60 or 70 years old and it still works great!”. I’m not surprised. They made things to last back when, not be broken and replaced in a year or two.
So , whether we like antiques for the history, or the evocative power they have, or for the monetary value—or for smell, like me—nothing compares to the value of antique, vintage items and even just old stuff because it is value that is measured in so many ways and on so many levels. And I am sure that each of us here has as many stories as I do of Why We Love Antiques.
Joanne Hancock is the co-owner of In Due Time Collectibles located on the Square in beautiful downtown Moultrie, Georgia.
