The New Old

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By one rule of thumb, an antique is anything that costs more used than it did new. The standard is more esthetic than functional: a Louis XIV chair is often a precarious support, and a 1926 Packard roadster may be a ruinously expensive way of getting down to the supermarket. But esthetics have nothing to do with the new trend in the antique trade. Its name is "junk." True, it has to be out-of-the-ordinary junk. But to the expert spotter, every attic and old barn in the U.S. is a potential treasure-trove of salable detritus. The technique is summed up by a roadside secondhand store south of Santa Rosa, Calif., which advertises with unconscious wit: WE BUY JUNK. WE SELL ANTIQUES.

The reasons for the rise of junk are not hard to find: a yearning for hand-crafted individuality in a mass-produced world, the increasing rarity of genuine antiques of all kinds, and the prohibitive cost of beautiful ones. So, as Mme. de Sevigne might have put it, "If one can't be beautiful, one can at least be amusing." And, used sparingly and with imagination, these humble relics are often amusing indeed.

Vanishing Indians. In many a subdivision house and functional apartment, the most cherished object is an old store sign or a circus poster, a shaving mug, a spinning wheel or an ornate mailbox, a collection of cast-iron toys or a bridal bouquet under glass. Many once worthless objects, such as Victorian dolls and samplers, brass coal scuttles and decorated washbasins, are greeted with glad, excited cries of discovery. A cigar-store Indian in good condition--if you can find one--fetches up to $1,500 today.

Manhattan is riddled with cute shoplets run by cute young men who know just how to turn Grandmother's laundry hamper into the most amusing planter for the living room. Real brass bedsteads might as well be made of solid gold, and signed Tiffany lamps, which sold for $100-$150 ten years ago, now cost $1,500-$2,000.

This apotheosis of the castoff has had worldwide repercussions. Paris' famed Flea Market is no longer a romantic shambles reminiscent of The Beggar's Opera but is getting to be more and more like a shopping center. It even has a parking lot. Flea Market stalls now sell for as much as $50,000 each and are often manned by antique dealers from the fashionable faubourgs, St.-Germain and St.-Honore. Their wares are mostly remarkable for their prices. On sale there last week was a velvet dog under glass for $100, a screen commemorating the 1900 Floradora Sextet for $80, a portrait of Lord Kimberley on glass for $160 and a small silver-plated coin case for $20.

No Haggling. Who pays? Parisians and tourists and antique dealers from the U.S.,* who have helped bid up French prices so astronomically that Flea Market dealers are beginning to do some of their own shopping on London's Portobello Road, where the spiral is also coiling upward. The oldtime tradition of haggling has become a thing of the past. "We know the value of things," says one dealer stiffly. "We mark our prices and we don't expect to bicker."

Many U.S. tourists think that there are still bargains to be had in little old shops in the country. But in France, at least, there is a good chance that the shop owners are city slickers who have cunningly disguised themselves as hick storekeepers in shawls or wide suspenders. London Antique Dealer George Knapp sells Americans a lot of Victorian pianos. "Preferably minus the works," he says. "Americans like to make them into bars, or put a hi-fi inside."

The profitable trade of forging antiques has happily adapted itself to the manufacturing of old junk--so much easier than turning out an 18th century piece of marquetry. To satisfy a current craze for phrenologist's heads, an excellent fake is now circulating heavily in London and New York in three sizes. Advertising the phrenology clinic of one C. Fuller and dated 1882, the porcelain is artificially cracked in a cobweb pattern and the printing is a tastefully faded blue. One of the first of them turned up on Manhattan's Third Avenue last winter, selling at $125; in June there were dozens around London at $70; last week they hit the Flea Market at the same price.

Other popular fakes are tradesmen's signs and old dolls, toys and jelly molds. Most of the forgeries are made in the U.S., where signs and wooden artifacts are aged half a dozen decades in about as many hours by the time-honored application of shellac and sizing, metal leaf and umber, topped off with a few wormholes supplied by an electric drill and a sound thrashing with a heavy iron chain.

Fake or real, one of the most popular items on Manhattan's First and Second Avenues these days is a pointing hand. Some people seem to think it a hilariously original way to show guests the way to the bathroom.

*But the U.S. is no longer the top market for traditional antiques. With Europe's economy booming, more and more Europeans are eager to buy back the antiques they sold off in the desperation of the immediate postwar depression. European dealers are often found outbidding U.S. rivals at U.S. auctions, shipping their prizes back to Europe to sell at up to 40% markup.

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