Design and Value
Not every antique qualifies as a masterpiece of design. By definition, there can be few antiques that truly qualify as masterpieces. The majority of antiques therefore fall into the category of merely good design or even poor design. One of the most influential books on antique furniture of all time, "Fine Points of Furniture: Early American" (a/k/a "Good, Better, Best") written by Albert Sack, makes exactly this point.
Unfortunately for today's collector, most of the true masterpieces of design were long ago scooped up by the major museums or are in the private collections of the rich and famous. Thus, what remains on the antiques market today is by and large examples of lesser design. When on the rare occasion a museum or private collector deaccessions an antique of true masterpiece status or a masterpiece is newly discovered, it goes for tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.
The best reproductions are all examples of superb design because none of the better companies wasted their time reproducing second rate antiques. Thus, if you like the look of traditional furniture, buying pre-owned custom mahogany furniture allows you to furnish your home with museum-worthy designs that generally are not available on the antiques market today or which go for a fortune. A high quality reproduction of a true masterpiece level antique is a joy to own and far more pleasing to look at than the average antique. Moreover the masterpiece reproduction can be had at a fraction of the price you would pay for the masterpiece antique and frequently less than the price you would pay for a third-rate antique.
The "Authentic" Antique Problem
One of the dirty little secrets in the antiques trade is that much of the antique furniture being sold in the antiques shops and auction houses isn't altogether genuine. This is nothing new. In fact, as long as collectors have been collecting antique furniture, unscrupulous people have been faking, altering and repairing antiques to make them appear more attractive to the collector.
One of the more simplistic alterations is combining or "marrying" a relatively inexpensive antique chest of drawers to a relatively inexpensive dressing table, or "lowboy," to make a "highboy." The highboy is a rarer and more desirable form than either a chest of drawers or a dressing table and the "married" highboy will typically sell for more than if the chest and dressing table were sold separately.
There are numerous other alterations possible. Inlay can be added to plain federal period furniture. Plain Chippendale and Queen Anne piece can be made more valuable by adding carving. Broken pieces from one antique can be combined with parts of another antique to make what appears to be a single antique. Thus the pedestal of a tea table with a broken or missing top can be combined with the top of a tea table with a broken or missing pedestal to make a complete tea table. A single chair or card table can be made into a pair. This is accomplished by removing pieces to simulate "damage." The "damaged" item is then "repaired" by introducing new pieces to replace those removed from the original. Meanwhile, the pieces that were removed from the original are combined with new pieces to make another "damaged and repaired" mate to the original.
So long as the buyer knows what they are getting and pays a price that reflects the fact that the piece has been altered or repaired, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of this. The problem, of course, is that most buyers have no idea what they are getting and end up paying a premium in the belief that the piece they are getting is in entirely original condition. If the alteration or repair is discovered after the purchase, the resale value of the item plummets. And good luck going after the dealer or auctioneer. Few will give out guarantees as to authenticity or condition.
The problem of faked, altered or repaired pieces is of epidemic proportions at the second and third-tier shops and auction houses. But even the top shops and auction houses have sold faked, altered and repaired pieces which were advertised as authentic antiques in original condition. Sometimes the dealers and auction houses have been fooled by their consignors and pickers. Sometimes they simply choose not to look too carefully at what they are selling since it is not in their short term economic interests to do so. And sometimes they are active participants in the fraud.
Don't think you can be taken? Guess again. Virtually every museum and major private collection in existence today has one or more pieces that has been faked, secretly altered or repaired. These are the same institutions and wealthy collectors who can afford to hire paid "experts" whose sole job it is to sniff out the fakes using every piece of modern high tech equipment known to man. If the so-called "experts" can be fooled (and they are, with surprising frequency), what chance does the ordinary buyer have of avoiding the fake or altered antique? The answer, quite plainly, is little or none.
When you buy a reproduction, you know exactly what you are getting. As yet there is no economic incentive for faking reproductions -- even those by the better makers -- because the cost of making a high quality reproduction that could be passed off as, say, a Schmieg & Kotzian (to take just one example) exceeds the prices that such reproductions bring in today's market. One should still be careful, however, when buying name-brand reproduction furniture as a number of dealers have begun relabelling pieces. This is done by pulling labels off of a stylistically less desirable piece by a better name maker and affixing the removed label onto a stylistically more desirable piece that is unsigned. Sometimes the two pieces may be of similar build quality, but often, the unsigned piece may be of a lower quality. In short, the buyer needs to be careful of
"chasing labels." Always ask yourself, if the piece appears to be of similar quality to documented pieces by the same maker and when possible attempt to check labelled furniture against the maker's photo-illustrated catalogs to determine whether the piece is indeed by the maker claimed.
Antiques and Every Day Living
Many antiques simply are not well suited to every day living. If you have children or pets, for example, placing a genuine antique of any value in your home is a questionable decision. Your investment can be lost in the blink of an eye if the child or pet accidentally (or deliberately) damages the antique because, with an antique, having an "original" or unretouched surface can mean the difference between a piece being worth a few thousand dollars and a few hundred thousand dollars. By contrast, a reproduction can be repaired or restored without significantly effecting the value of the reproduction.
Not all antiques, moreover, are suited to modern homes. High-style antique case pieces (highboys and bookcases for example) are typically too large to fit in many modern homes because the antiques were frequently well over eight feet tall. Many reproduction case pieces were scaled down to fit into modern homes or were copied from rare diminutive antique examples.
Antique chairs present the exact opposite problem. Our ancestors were on average shorter and lighter than we are today. As a result, the chairs that were made for our ancestors are frequently too low, too narrow or too delicately made to be comfortable or safe in everyday use in the modern home. Many reproduction chairs were made from models that were unusually large or robust in design.
Copyright 2006 by Alan Gale
