BUYING ANCESTORS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 7, 8 July 1922, Page 17

BUYING ANCESTORS

HOW FAMILY HISTORY IS MADE.

It costs _ lot of money to buy family history, "but many modern folk with long purses and short pedigrees are doing- it. They buy it in the big art salerooms, o? ransack- the stores of second-hand dealers.

"Quite a new type has made its appearance in tho salerooms of late," a wellknown dealer told a Daily Chronicle representative

"I suppose you wosld call them the new rich. They have plenty of money, very Uveird ideas on art, and no family history to speak of. "They reg»rtl this deficiency as a drawback to social advancement, so they try to make it up by buying antique stuff for their modern mansions. Ancestor hunters we call them. "When tho pictures, furniture, and other treasures of a famous old family oome into the market they make a point of turning up on tho first 'viow day' and picking out a few things (that they think will help to bolster up their claim to blue blood and an ancient lino.

Of oourse, riey don't go in for the roally big stuff—national treasures and so on—because that would be easily recognisable, and would defeat their object. "But somebody's _ 'portrait of a gentleman, with impressivo wig, is an irresistible lure. It looks so nice in the library,_ and they take such a pride in pointing it out to visitors and saying, 'Yes—an ancestor of mine, painted in his study by one of the leading artists of hie time. Supposed to be a Van Dyck.' "It's tho same with furniture. They want old stuff, with real worm holes, not the imitation variety made by the professional worm-holer, who, by the way, is a very important man in the faked antoque industry. "They don't kno* tho difference between a massive Jacobean sideboard and an elegant Chippendale creation, but so long as it's old—and worm-eaten—they oon't mind.

They shove it in the dining-room, contemplate it with immense satisfaction, and tell their new friends it's 'been in tho family for 200 years or so.' But they don't often come to tho sales. ■1-ney get exports toi do the buying, because its easy to bo taken in when purchasing family history."