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Epilogue: The End of the Antique?
- University of Massachusetts Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
< 205 Epilogue The End of the Antique? < On January 31, 2002, the antique firm of Israel Sack, Inc., closed its doors. After Israel Sack died in May 1959, his sons, Harold, Albert, and Robert, had continued the family tradition, joined by Albert’s son Donald in 1968. Certainly the decision to close the firm was influenced by the brothers’ advancing age. (The oldest brother, Harold, had died in 2000; Albert was in his eighties and Robert in his seventies.)1 But the demise of Israel Sack, Inc., a firm that had been a leader in the collecting community for most of the twentieth century, also raises larger questions about the practice of antiquing today. How robust is the market for early American household furnishings, and what meanings do today’s collectors attach to old things? If antiquing was an invention of the twentieth century, will it continue to thrive in the twenty-first? On television, antiquing is alive and well, represented by the popular PBS program Antiques Roadshow, the art and antique appraisal show in which experts estimate the value of historic objects owned by average C hapter 5 Americans. Based on the BBC production of the same title, Roadshow has graced U.S. television sets since 1997, making it one of PBS’s most long-lived hits. Expectant viewers who want to have their treasures evaluated register by lottery and endure long waits as Roadshow experts, who number between seventy and eighty for each event, appraise several thousand objects a day. The show’s wide appeal has catapulted some of its appraisers to fame, most notably the twin brothers Leigh and Leslie Keno, experts in early American decorative arts who documented their own collecting adventures in Hidden Treasures: Searching for Masterpieces of American Furniture.2 Blond and blue-eyed, the two have become the poster boys for twenty-first-century antiquing, reinforcing the hobby’s elite image of years past with their tasteful suits and WASPish air. Antiques Roadshow trades in a much more expanded notion of antiques than this study, demonstrating that the collecting canon constructed by early twentieth-century connoisseurs (including the beliefs that true antiques had to be made before 1830 and that an antique’s primary value is aesthetic) has not prohibited American collectors from constructing their own ideas of what constitutes an “antique.” Early American household furnishings and decorative objects are a staple on the program and bring some of the highest estimates, but Roadshow also includes a wide variety of other collectibles, from Native American textiles to baseball cards, 1970s lunch boxes to Renaissance statues, all drawing their cultural significance from a host of associations, emotions, and cultural values. Roadshow appraisers chat excitedly about a collection of movie posters evoking the glamour of the 1940s. They praise Civil War photographs for their ability to document an earlier time, reminisce about the simple humor of Charles Schultz when presented with a collection of his drawings, and applaud early twentieth-century art glass for its beauty. Indeed, watching Antiques Roadshow demonstrates that even though midcentury collectors dismissed historical associations as a source of value, the allure of the storied object has not gone away. Documented histories regularly increase an object’s estimated price. When appraiser Don Ellis valued a Navajo blanket, woven between 1840 to 1860 for a Ute chief, at $350,000 to $500,000 (the show’s highest on-air estimate until 2009), he added that he had not taken into consideration the owner’s story that Kit Carson had given the blanket to his family. If that provenance could be proven, Ellis said, the blanket could be worth even more.3 206 = [3.236.98.81] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:31 GMT) < 207 The End of the Antique Sentiment also plays an important role in the Roadshow drama. Regular viewers know the moment when one of the show’s expert appraisers shocks the antique owner by announcing that an object that had been in his or her family for generations is worth thousands of dollars. Central to the drama of this moment is our knowledge of the owner’s choice: sell the heirloom for financial gain or keep it and maintain family history. If the piece is sold and removed from its family context, its associational meaning is compromised ; if it remains within the family, its monetary value cannot be realized. On the air, owners often maintain the importance of the object’s sentimental value and deny that they will ever sell, but one wonders what decisions they will make when the cameras are gone. By focusing on objects’ monetary value, Roadshow reinforces the function of antiques as commodities, an idea central to the twentieth-century conception of the antique and one that remains powerful today. Just as George and Jessie Gardner paid careful attention to their collection’s market value, Antiques Roadshow translates every object it features into dollars and cents. Roadshow appraisers frequently begin by asking how much the owner paid for the object. Viewers understand that this question sets the stage for a judgment of the owner’s capability as a shopper. The show’s regular trope is to dazzle viewers with estimates of economic gain. Frequently, participants will bring objects found at yard sales or junk shops and be rewarded with estimates far exceeding their original investment. The 2008 season included a special episode called “Trash to Treasures.”4 Demonstrations of successful shopping celebrate the idea of antiquing as a test of knowledge, the savvy antiquer being the one who can distinguish trash from treasure. Occasionally Roadshow provides the more cautionary tale of an individual who overpaid or was duped by a forgery. In this sense, little has changed in the last hundred years of collecting. Just as early twentieth-century collectors looked to subvert the market by collecting door-to-door, so too do modern collectors scrounge tag sales and church bazaars. Similarly, as yesterday’s antiquers worried about spurious antiques, contemporary junk snuppers fear forgeries and fakes. In all that has changed in the last hundred years, one thing remains constant: collecting remains grounded in the consumer experience. The influence of technology is also an important theme in the history of collecting. While early twentieth-century collectors relied on the automobile to facilitate their searches, today’s antiquers embrace the new C hapter 5 technology of the Internet, particularly the online auction house eBay.5 Founded as a trading site for Pez candy dispensers, eBay is hardly limited to the sale of antiques. Its shoppers purchase everything from electronic goods to real estate, and while antiques and collectibles make up a significant percentage of eBay sales, sales of early American household furnishings are relatively few.6 Indeed, like Antiques Roadshow, eBay embraces a variety of collectibles and demonstrates that today’s collectors find a dizzying variety of objects meaningful. In eBay’s “Antique” category, one can find Chippendale chairs grouped with cast iron garden statues, twentiethcentury art pottery, sewing machines, and model ships. The “Collectibles” category is even broader and includes everything from comic books to beer cans, lunch boxes to coins. While aesthetic considerations provide value to many eBay goods, nostalgia is also an important driver. In her 100 Best Things I’ve Sold on eBay series, Lynn A. Dralle, the self-proclaimed Queen of Auctions, tells many stories in which everyday objects from the 1960s and 1970s find eager purchasers because of their ability to evoke personal memories.7 Typical is the story of a gentleman who enthusiastically purchased a simple glass “sun tea” jar because it reminded him of his childhood. In this sense, aesthetics remains important for many collectors , but in today’s market sentiment has value in and of itself.8 While the objects Dralle sells are very different from those offered by early twentieth-century dealers, her stories of yard-sale finds and hefty earnings underscore another constant: the profitability of antiques. People have always been attracted to the antique trade because of its accessibility. Pickers could enter the business with little more than determination , hard work, and enough charm to make a deal. Even so, pickers were constrained by the dealers they supplied. Lacking a storefront and a way to reach the customer, pickers had to accept what dealers offered for their finds, knowing full well that a sizable mark-up would be added. In many ways, eBay has liberated pickers. No longer in need of a physical store to reach customers, pickers sell directly to the public and increase their profits. A trip to the “Collectibles” section of the bookstore brings a multitude of how-to-books promising easy riches from antiques. Titles such as Antiquing for Dummies, How to Sell Antiques and Collectibles on eBay . . . And Make a Fortune! and How to Make $20,000 a Year in Antiques and Collectibles without Leaving Your Job demonstrate the popularity of antiquing as a commercial enterprise.9 My own experience corroborates the 208 = [3.236.98.81] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:31 GMT) < 209 The End of the Antique idea that antiques make good business. During the formative years of this project, I lived next door to an antique dealer. He did not operate out of a storefront, but traveled around the country selling his finds at historical reenactments and flea markets. That was until eBay arrived. Suddenly, what had been a discreet little business boomed. My neighbor was out on the front lawn taking digital pictures of his merchandise, and his house became so cluttered with antiques and collectibles that shelves of merchandise blocked the windows and new employees crowded our shared driveway. Just as they had for the early twentieth-century Jewish dealers I described in chapter 2, antiques offered my neighbor an opportunity for financial independence. The high-end market for early American furniture has also soared.10 When I arrived at Brown University in the mid-1990s, people were still talking about a $12.1 million desk. Most likely crafted by John Goddard, a master Rhode Island cabinetmaker of the pre-Revolutionary period, and originally owned by Nicholas Brown, the desk had passed down in the Brown family. In 1989, the Browns decided to sell the desk and use the profits to restore the family’s eighteenth-century home and endow it as a center for scholars working at Brown University.11 (This book began in an office in that house and with a stipend from that endowment.) No piece of American-made furniture has toppled the desk’s standing as bringing the highest price ever paid at auction for an object other than a painting, but the sale set off a wave of high-stakes buying. In 2005, another piece of furniture owned by Nicholas Brown and attributed to John Goddard brought an astounding price. This time it was a Chippendale mahogany scalloped-top tea table that sold for $8.4 million.12 Both the desk and the tea table were purchased by members of the Sack family. Such sales speak to the continued vitality of antiques in American culture , but dealers are telling another story about the antique market, one that suggests that antiques have lost their meaning for many Americans. According to many dealers, the “middle market” has gone soft. Pieces blessed with rarity, quality, and original condition bring impressive prices, while, thanks to the popularity of the shabby-chic decorating style, which features recycled old furniture and fabrics, inexpensive, heavily worn, or rustic furniture sells too. But middle-market objects, what Maine Antiques Digest, a periodical aimed at experienced collectors and dealers, has described as early American furnishings of “passable C hapter 5 quality but otherwise undistinguished by . . . provenance, creator, or condition,” have found few buyers. As proof, the magazine’s writers offer the fact that Sotheby’s auction house raised its minimum lot value to $5,000 and discontinued its second-tier auctions.13 No statistical evidence exists to document middle-market sales, but Maine Antiques Digest writer David Vazdauskas chronicles an era of economic uncertainty.14 For many, the demise of the middle market is linked to another troubling trend, the lack of young collectors. In the rapidly graying antique market, “young” is defined as under forty-five years old. Clear in the understanding that their customer base is shrinking, many industry insiders are encouraging the cultivation of this younger buyer. Maine Antiques Digest now runs a regular column titled “The Young Collector,” and offers advice to those seeking such business. Use the Internet, they urge. Take young collectors under your wing and educate them about collecting; create more attractive displays, provide more attentive sales people.15 The advice is plentiful, if not a panacea. Implicit in many of these suggestions is the recognition that buying antiques is a difficult consumer challenge, one that requires in-depth understanding of an object’s rarity, quality, condition, and age. Maine Antiques Digest columnists suggest that dealers make education an implicit part of their services, just as Israel Sack did in the early twentieth century.16 But the idea that buying antiques is difficult for those who are not trained experts remains. Certainly Antiques Roadshow does little to assuage such fears with its penchant for shocking viewers. If the objects featured by Roadshow function as commodities, they do so within a market impenetrable to the uninitiated consumer. Indeed, the show’s premise is that ordinary people do not know how much their possessions are worth and that only trained “experts” can discern monetary value. During a recent pledge drive on a PBS member station, the announcer emphasized the appraisers’ ability to navigate what he portrayed as a market turned upside down, in which objects assumed to be valuable rarities are found worthless while trinkets bring thousands of dollars. In this reading, regular viewing is offered as a kind of consumer education, providing viewers with insurance against their own lack of knowledge. Participants who bring their treasures for appraisal are eager for the chance to receive expert advice, but at the same time viewers assimilate the experts’ teachings in the hope that they will be able to make their own finds. Parodies of the program are abundant on 210 = [3.236.98.81] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:31 GMT) < 211 The End of the Antique the online video site YouTube, and they often draw on the unequal power relationship between appraiser and owner for their humor. In one skit, the appraiser uses his authority to scam owners and purchase antiques at greatly devalued prices.17 The piece plays on the general public’s insecurity and its distrust of the antique market. One wonders to what degree such fears have undermined the middle market. Those who buy shabbychic chests assume little risk, since the appeal of such items stems as much from their low prices as their aesthetics. Similarly, those buying at the market’s high end can be confident in their decision, their new possessions having passed the scrutiny of connoisseurship. Middle-market antiques can be more problematic, as their mid-range price is tied to their lack of perfection; those who buy at such levels often find their purchases stigmatized as “undistinguished” or “mediocre.”18 The middle-market problem also suggests a much larger dissatisfaction with antiques. Younger Americans might not be educated antique consumers , but do they even want to be? For collectors in the first half of the twentieth century, antiques provided evidence of an American artistic spirit and of the success of the capitalist order. Antiques were culturally significant; Jessie Gardner, for example, believed her antique collection would not only corroborate her class status, but also better her community. Contemporary articles in Maine Antiques Digest suggest that the meanings associated with antiques, whether patriotic, hegemonic, or status driven, have been lost. One article praises organizers of the Forty-fourth Delaware Antiques Show for making antiques more hip by serving Asian food and sake at the opening reception, a menu that suggests that antiques have lost their relevance as symbols of a distinctly American culture.19 Other articles tie antiques to environmental concerns. “Antiques are green,” declared David Vazdauskas in 2005.20 While early American household furnishings are recycled, so too are Goodwill store purchases. Similarly, the promise that a two-hundred -year-old chest of drawers will not produce outgassing only reeks of desperation (figure 31). With such marketing schemes, it is of little surprise that some experts have suggested that the way to encourage new collectors is to abandon traditional antiques categories and encourage collecting in eras with high nostalgia appeal, particularly games and toys.21 The appeal of aesthetically defined antiques has lessened somewhat with scholars as well. Those studying the decorative arts in museums and universities might seem far removed from uncertainties of the antique C hapter 5 market, but historically the concerns of decorative arts scholars have closely connected them to antique collectors. Indeed, decorative arts scholars often study questions of attribution, authenticity, and quality— precisely those attributes that bring value in the market.22 By asserting the value of historic objects as anthropological evidence of cultural practices , Malcolm Watkins’s work at the Smithsonian represented a challenge to traditional decorative arts scholarship. For Watkins, authenticity and identification mattered, but only as a starting point to allow the historian to use material objects as primary source texts in the exploration of the past. By the 1970s, the approach Watkins was taking would have Figure 31. The magazine Antiques and Fine Art offered this window sticker to its readers in 2008 to promote the idea of antique collecting as an environmentally friendly practice. Image courtesy of Antiques and Fine Art. 212 = [3.236.98.81] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:31 GMT) < 213 The End of the Antique its own name: material culture studies. Based on the idea that historic objects function as, in the words of Jules Prown, a reflection of “mind in matter,” material culture studies dismissed decorative arts scholars as antiquarian, charging that they failed to place objects in historical context and instead fetishized the object.23 Like Watkins, material culture scholars expanded the notion of what kinds of objects to study, maintaining that every man-made item reflects the culture of its maker and its user. As a result, many museums, particularly history museums, turned away from displaying high-style furniture and embraced more ordinary objects, while others, such as Colonial Williamsburg, reinterpreted their elite furnishings and buildings using the tools of social history.24 In Connecticut, where I live, the Connecticut Historical Society now regularly presents everyday objects in its exhibits as material evidence of past practices. A comic book suggests boyhood fantasies, boxes of laundry detergent tell us about domestic labor, and typewriters illustrate the daily tasks of office workers. This penchant for ordinary objects is relatively new for the society. When Christopher Bickford wrote his history of the Connecticut Historical Society in 1975, he identified the society’s commitment to collecting and documenting the state’s contributions to the decorative and fine arts, a directive that began with collector George Dudley Seymour’s gift of early American furniture, portraits, glass, and ceramics in 1945, as an enduring centerpiece of the museum’s mission.25 Today, visitors to the historical society’s flagship building will find few examples of early American decorative arts on display. All this makes one wonder if the fascination with aesthetically defined antiques is coming to an end. Are young, financially successful American couples, those who in years past entered the collecting community and supplied the antique market with new blood, too dedicated to a culture of carefully crafted eccentricity and personal expression to choose tradition -bound antiques as their furnishings? Has the construction of a more inclusive definition of what constitutes value in old things, both in the academic community and in the collectibles market, made fine early American furnishings obsolete? One thing remains certain. Americans’ belief that the household furnishings of early American elites represents a distinctly American art is rooted in the history of the early twentieth century. Our understanding and appreciation for antiques, like every aspect of American culture, will have to adapt to the changing times. ...