Millennials don’t want things they want “experiences,” according to opinion surveys. Millennials come in for scorn from the dealers I meet. Pay someone $20 to take it off our hands. We can buy cheap shirts and cheap chairs. (“Ikea” sounds ominous the way the dealers snarl it, as though it’s a malevolent force.) Ikea could be called “fast furniture,” which itself is modeled on fast food and fast fashion. Young people just starting out will grab some Ikea furniture and move on. They have big student loans and little money. The next generation of buyers-the millennials-is missing. House interiors have changed: Going, going, gone are dining rooms, the big cabinet/armoire with the TV, shelves for books-and books, as well. Many people are downsizing their overstuffed baby-boomer households. This is due, they say, to some wide-ranging factors: Americans are losing their sense of history, because it’s not being taught as much in schools. The dealers still “love the stuff,” but the market has caved in. Dealers sat by their booths, either staring off into space or fighting off sleep. There was some activity in the morning but not enough to sustain an entire day. At one small New Hampshire antiques show I visited, the 55 dealers easily outnumbered the shoppers. Vintage wares are also crowding out antiques at the thrice-yearly Brimfield Antique Show in Massachusetts, collectors say, but that change may be what draws 250,000 to America’s largest and most famous outdoor antiques show. One 25-year-old auction house worker ran a quick test, sending her friend photos of similar old tables, one labeled antique and the other vintage. ” Rather than trying to sell pieces to collectors dedicated to one style, a Rago Remix sale might feature a Louis XVI–style gilded chair alongside a contemporary abstract painting, a folksy 19th-century sponge-painted pine blanket chest, and vintage Louis Vuitton luggage. No longer.) Well-known New Jersey antiques dealer David Rago has created “Rago Remix” auctions dedicated to “timeless style” that mix the “contemporary + classic. (When it was founded in 1955, it wouldn’t accept pieces that were less than 100 years old. A once-hot Manhattan antiques fair held each January has dropped “Antiques” from its title now it’s just the Winter Show. Photo Credit : courtesy of Bourgeault-Horan Antiquariansįlea markets and secondhand stores are running from the word antique. Its market value, however, has taken a beating. In terms of its looks, this 19th-century desk (aka “Lot 577”) seems untouched by time. Formal is out “mid-20th-century casual” is in, such as colorful plates and kitchen tables from the 1950s. “Dark brown furniture gives the younger generation the willies just to look at it,” says Julie Hall, aka “the Estate Lady,” a North Carolina professional who has helped thousands of clients dissolve or downsize family estates.Īlso not wanted: china, china cabinets, crystal goblets, silver tea sets, pianos, bureaus, sideboards, and collectible figurines, such as Hummels. All of it is in the same police lineup: the better-made department store furniture, the glued-together laminate office desk, and real pieces of craftsmanship, chairs and chests that have dignity, sure form, and proportion. Brown furniture, it is solemnly announced, is dead.Īn industry term, “brown furniture” takes in grandfather clocks and Federal-style desks that once belonged to Portsmouth tailors as well as slumped couches and coffee tables scratched like hockey rink ice. “The Recline and Fall of Antique Furniture” ( Financial Times). “That Perfect Dining Table? No One Wants It, Even If It’s Free” ( The Wall Street Journal). The headlines have been sounding the alarm for a few years now: “Memo to Par ents: The Kids Don’t Want Your Furniture” ( The Denver Post). In the years between those two auctions in New York and Portsmouth, the antiques world has been turned on its head. Moses was in debt when he died his desk has followed his slide, its market value falling almost 80 percent. A bidder on the phone will take it home for just $12,000 plus a buyer’s premium of $2,400. The prestigious auction house sold it for $59,750 plus a buyer’s premium of almost 20 percent, bringing the final price to more than $71,000.įourteen years later, Lot 577 is back home in Portsmouth as part of Bourgeault’s Summer Weekend Auction. Back in 2004, Moses’s elegant desk had found its way to Rockefeller Center in New York City, one lot in Christie’s auction of “important American furniture,” among other things.
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