That we continue to carry on in business has some unlikely effects. One of them is that we’re inordinately targeted now by the allied trades- designers, restorers, and the like- seeking our custom, or perhaps as likely, that we might pass their details on to others. The net effect of all this is, beyond how it taxes the ability of our 8 year old server to deliver our spam email, is the time all of us in our gallery require to delete, and unsubscribe, so much of what might be charitably considered as drek.
That said, with so much of our business now electronically generated, none of us will wholesale delete and risk throwing out the serious inquiry with the spam bathwater. As a consequence, I read at least the headers and from time to time open emails I might not otherwise. Such was the case today, when I opened an email from a decorative painter, whose header cited a local designer’s project using, quoting now ‘a delightful mix of antiques and contemporary pieces.’ Well, of course, since our own gallery contains a delightful mix of antiques and contemporary pieces, I thought, in the spirit of affiliation, this email merited a quick read. I could have saved myself the trouble. The ‘antiques’ were, to put it succinctly, not, and while the mix to some eyes may have been delightful, all of what was rendered was a series of rooms fluffed up with cushions and tsatski . That the antique pieces were more along the line of what’s now termed ‘vintage’ got me to thinking, then, about the recent rise in the use of this term and what seems its unfortunately broadened definition.
Our business is not exactly driven by etymological precision, but despite that, I’m still surprised by the inroads certain terms have made into the trade. ‘Vintage’ is one of them. From whence it has arisen, I don’t know, but it seemed to denote a piece of furniture that has some age to it, and might be of a period style but is itself not a period piece. Not so very long ago- say 6 months- this is what most people would have called ‘used furniture’, something a body might have found in a thrift store, or at a garage sale. Note that a few lines back I said ‘some age’ and not ‘antique’, as the dating of vintage pieces, as divined from the literature wherein the term was used, although fairly amorphous has never heretofore applied to anything approaching 100 years old.
Something that seems concomitant with the use of vintage pieces in design is the degree- the great degree- to which they lend themselves to being tarted up. A decorative paint finish, fanciful upholstery, and artful deployment all function to give pride of place to a piece that one might not otherwise fancy. But, then, this is where the interior designer comes in, and that is what a body ends up paying for. Time is money, and, times being the way they are, designers, should they wish to remain solvent, will scrupulously supervise the refurbishment of a piece of vintage goods of otherwise limited value.
Was a time when, ironically, pieces of some significant value were altered by designers. Witness the predations of Syrie Maugham, whose white rooms of the 1920’s and 1930’s demanded that period furniture be stripped and ‘pickled’ in order to articulate. Certainly within an interior design context, vandalizing a period piece is reprehensible. I suppose, then, the rapid linguistic and intellectual segue from ‘vintage’ to ‘antique’ is, by comparison, less so. With all that, and in the middle age of my existence, I rather fancied thinking of myself as vintage. But ‘antique’? Now that’s reprehensible.