Antique Collecting November/December 2013 | Page 5
Editorial copy 9_Editorial copy 2.qxp 23/10/2013 11:09 Page 3
ANTIQUE COLLECTING
FOR COLLECTORS • BY COLLECTORS • ABOUT COLLECTING
‘In a society where statisticians thrive, liberty and individuality are likely to
be emasculated. Statistics, which is no more than State Arithmetic... is a
system used to enable rulers to know just how far they may safely go in
picking the pockets of their subjects.’
M. J. Moroney, Facts From Figures, revised edition, 1953
Front cover: A pair of small South German
wheel-lock puffers for a boy, Saxon, dated
1856. Courtesy of Peter Finer Arms & Armour
(see advertisement on page 7).
© Antique Collectors’ Club 2013
No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means
without prior written permission from the publishers. The
publishers do not accept any responsibility for, or necessarily
agree with, any views expressed, statements or claims made
in any articles, news items or advertisements published in
Antique Collecting.
At the end of a year in which the
economic situation is said to be
improving, one is tempted to look
forward with hopeful eye. This is despite
the fact that the economic improvement
is of a derisory nature (growth of one
percent) when compared to the economic
losses of previous years (down five
percent or more). It is also possible that
given their notorious unreliability, the
statistics may be revised. If one were to
ignore these trifling percentages, listen to
the opinion of most economists, and look
at the overhang of colossal debt we have
incurred, hopes and aspirations would be
squashed by the menace of a financial
tsunami of towering size.
Where does this situation leave
antique collecting? All the more
surprising that the activity has survived,
even if diminished in the middle range.
At the top end, the concentration of
wealth observed by social and economic
reporters generates record prices for
prized trophies. It is in the middle that
survival, even if at lower volumes,
continues to confound doomsayers. For
society’s best paid one percent the boom
years have never stopped, whilst the
middle class, on whom much of the
domestic antiques business depends,
have suffered the longest squeeze in
living memory. Due to technology and
the free flow of information, many
secure jobs are disappearing. The era of
the prosperous detached-house, welleducated, hardworking, thrifty, socially
stabilising middle class is said to be over.
The parallel in the world of antiques is
clear, with new records being spent at
the very top whilst the middle languishes
and the bottom seethes in Hogarthian
squalor. It is a time when opportunities
have to be seized.
Things like silver, jewellery, fine
porcelain and high-value artefacts
continue to attract. Furniture is still very
shaky. An illustration can be taken from
BBC’s Bargain Hunt. The experienced Tim
Wonnacott and his daily auction experts
incline to a humorous realism that still
allows enthusiasm to break through. In
August, one of the contesting pairs in the
game acquired an Edwardian Sheratonstyle mahogany cylinder-top writing desk
on tapering legs for £160 as one of its
three bargains. Tim Wonnacott was
dismayed. “You have paid much too
much”, he groaned: £160 is way over the
top for a competent piece of second-hand
furniture of no great age. The piece then
sold at auction for £220, to the delight of
the contestants and the amazement of a
genial Tim. It was a salutary example of
how far the market for such pieces and
trade expectations for them have fallen.
A combination of straitened domestic
economics, transient fashion and cultural
change has drastically diminished, by at
least half, the price that would be
expected a decade ago. The participants
in the game, however, sensed the bargain
that the piece had become.
It is hard to believe that the middle
majority will take dismal forecasts of
their continued reduction meekly.
Economists say that in both the USA and
Britain the middle isn’t just being
squeezed, it is actually shrinking, with
downward effects on lifestyle. The
destruction of returns on savings adds to
the pain. In London, house price
increases reflect the dominance of top
earners and resident plutocrats in a
preview of what would be a false
recovery based on house price inflation,
although recovery is said to be broader
based. When the virtues of thrift and
hard work are devalued, social instability
is usually predictable but investment
alternatives become attractive. I wrote in
May that optimism still exists, and it
does. So do not stop collecting and do
not listen too much to experts. No
economic forecast is ever exactly right,
except by chance. The recovery is fragile
and an upheaval is becoming very likely,
even if its timing is uncertain. But only a
pessimist lets things grind on as they are.
John Andrews
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