More antique shops than pubs...

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33959, 27 September 1975, Page 11

More antique shops than pubs...

By

Patrick O’Donovan

Among the unflagging industries of Britain are the making of whisky and the gathering and sale of antiques. They are not enough to sustain an economy. And anyway whisky is something that sells itself. Scotland has a religious prejudice against making bad whisky. It would be an abysmal salesman who could not sell it.

Antiques are different. If the rest of the industry, salesmanship and showmanship were as effective as the British antique trade, there would not be the shadow of an' economic crisis over Britain. The annual Antiques Fair was held in London’s Grosvenor House recently. Grosvenor House is a slightly dated ziggurat made of brick overlooking Hyde Park, and is a cross between a hotel and an apartment block, with handsome suites of public rooms for the relaxation of the rich, native and foreign. Everything there in the great suite of hired rooms

was for sale — except those things and pictures that had been lent from royal palaces and castles. It emphasised once again that England is the undisputed capital of this trade, with colonies in New York, Paris, Venice and anywhere else that, takes their exuberant fancy. About £2O million worth of stuff was on sale, and the odd item went for less than £lOO.

Basically, the trade is in the hands of two firms in discreet and gentlemanly rivalry — Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Both, to the alien eye, are little more than a series of auction rooms in a high cost, high prestige, high pretension part of the capital. In fact they are fiercely expert, as authoritative as a great museum, as honest as the Bank of England. And they command, indirectly and from on high, the Trade.

The market for antiques is said to be uncertain. It suffers from economic uncertainties, from the promise of punitive measures against the ownership of works of art in the form

of 'a “wealth tax.” But. again and again, rare objects far exceed their first with a confident, large expected price. French furniture, Chinese porcelain of the less common sort. Old Masters, they inflate like a national currency. So do Turners and Stubbs. But the French and the Italians too have developed a strong and well paying taste for reasonably priced English things. They are easy to live with. They do not overwhelm. They suggest prosperity within bounds and a genteel taste. And if that sounds like a condemnation it is none the less true.

For although the Italians and French have produced forests of splendid possessions and works of art, they cannot compete with England in the middle range. For England was first with a confident, large and aspiring middle class. It. started in the eighteenth century. It became vora-

cious in the beginning of me nineteenth ceniury. it was fortune then, under the uncertain guidance of the Prince Regent, to strike a note of elegance and simplicity. All through the rich nineteenth century the rich continued to buy things, and their ever-changing tastes had to be satisfied. The supply seems to be inexhaustible.

Of course, the marvellous things are in the antique shops in the rich streets of London, Edinburgh and York. These are the hushed museums where everything is for sale in the half light. All is done with the soft sell, the low voice, the soundless footfall and the courteous manner that does not even crack before an attempt actually to bargain —as if you were in Southern Europe!

But all over the country there are the antique shops that vary from the secretly superb to the back-street shops in cities like

Southampton where the treasures of old-age pensioners come to rest.

The source of these innumerable things is not exactly definable. There are the country house sales held in suddenly dusty and carpetless rooms. They are held when a family falls on hard times, moves io smaller and more practical quarters or dies out. They are well attended by people who want to see the inside of a hitherto closely closed house. The dealers treat them like a gold mine. They can recognise a nugget under layers of paint. And again and again people, a little pushed for the ready, take a treasure to be sold. Everything seems to be on the move and even the British still buy, since this hunt for antique bargains is an authentic national sport. But the quarry is changing a little.

Officially antiques stop at 1830. But that is merely official For the first time the Antiques Fair had a section dedicated to-1830-1930. And that is revolution

in high places. A sort of sophisticated and cultivated taste in the third-rate is now in fashion. It is not only that almost anything high Victorian sells, from flat irons to stone hot-water bottles, to souvenirs of a dead seaside, but the thirties are in with an appalling vengeance. The streets of prosperous England, and most of it looks to be still as

indecently sleek as a race horse without its blanket on. are lined with antique

shops. This is an exaggeration of course. But in the small Hampshire town in which 1 live we have four churches, seven public houses and eight antique shops. One more is opening beside the laundrette, and in what used to be a fish and chip shop in which the proprietor hanged himself one Friday night And with nothing on. And all these shops are crammed with stuff, most of which is reasonably authentic. But bargains — there are none left in the world. — (O.F.N.S. copyright).