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Mystery Box
18 Plays5 years ago
Bright young antiques dealers Pippa Biddle and Benjamin Davidson come on the pod to talk treasure—specifically, a homely wooden box that punches above its weight, thanks to its curious Revolutionary War provenance and a Herman Melville connection. Also—certainly music to the ears during this holiday season—the pair sings the praises of untrammeled accumulation as an interior design strategy.
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Transcript
Introduction to Quintner Antiques and Hosts
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Curious Objects brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:14
Speaker
My guests today are Pippa Biddle and Ben Davidson.
00:00:18
Speaker
It's nice to have another Ben on the podcast.
00:00:20
Speaker
Do again.
00:00:22
Speaker
And together they own and operate Quintner Antiques in Germantown, New York.
00:00:28
Speaker
They also write a regular column for the magazine Antiques called Object Lesson, which I highly recommend.
00:00:35
Speaker
And they wear and have worn a variety of different hats, which we'll get into as the conversation goes on.
Transition to Online Store During Pandemic
00:00:42
Speaker
But I wanted to just start right off the bat asking you about Quintner Antiques.
00:00:48
Speaker
This is, after all, a podcast about antiques.
00:00:52
Speaker
And I think listeners would be interested to hear a little bit about the nature of the shop.
00:00:58
Speaker
What is it?
00:00:58
Speaker
What do you buy and sell?
00:01:00
Speaker
And then later on, we'll get into a bit of the history behind it and how you
Passion for American Colonial Style and Hudson Valley Influence
00:01:05
Speaker
got into the business.
00:01:05
Speaker
But what would be a typical sort of piece that you would buy and sell at Quintner?
00:01:12
Speaker
Yeah, so what we buy and sell at Quintner has changed a little bit actually over the pandemic because we decided to close our retail store and move our store entirely online.
00:01:23
Speaker
We still do in-person restoration and repair work, but it's just sort of adjusting to this new normal.
00:01:31
Speaker
So we mostly focus on smalls, small decorative objects, and we try to hit a pretty approachable price point.
00:01:39
Speaker
So those are two things that size and what we'd be able to sell it for that we sort of take into every item that we look at.
00:01:47
Speaker
But a big thing for us, both of us are quite passionate about design.
00:01:52
Speaker
sort of American colonial style, pieces that speak to that style, and really the style of the Hudson Valley.
00:01:59
Speaker
We're not mid-century modern people.
00:02:01
Speaker
You don't see a lot of lightly stained wood.
00:02:07
Speaker
Or chrome.
00:02:08
Speaker
Or chrome.
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah, you don't see a lot of chrome.
00:02:11
Speaker
We really like painted boxes, so we obsess a little over painted boxes.
00:02:17
Speaker
But a lot of it's a passion project, just what we see being beautiful and being able to be brought into someone's home in a way that is truly additive.
Diverse Inventory and Accessibility of Antiques
00:02:26
Speaker
to the environment they live within that brings in warmth, which I know is really unspecific, but does allow us to really take a broad vision when we go to auction or when we go to buy.
00:02:39
Speaker
We're able to look without having to have laser focus and really think about what is beautiful and what fits in a home and what makes us feel good.
00:02:50
Speaker
It's interesting.
00:02:50
Speaker
I mean, if I heard what you had just said without any context, without having talked to you before, without having read your articles in the magazine Antiques and that sort of thing, I might be sort of dismissive.
00:03:04
Speaker
I might think, oh, gosh, well, you know, it sounds like you're not really a specialist.
00:03:08
Speaker
You don't are just sort of
00:03:10
Speaker
buying cute things and probably don't know a whole lot about the history and so on.
00:03:16
Speaker
Maybe that's just because I'm pretentious.
00:03:18
Speaker
But you do.
00:03:20
Speaker
I mean, you both are quite deeply knowledgeable about really a wide variety of American colonial forms and
00:03:29
Speaker
other types of objects.
00:03:31
Speaker
So, you know, most of the dealers that I think of who are who really have specialized knowledge about decorative arts, they run businesses that are oriented toward the most expensive objects, the highest end pieces, and they tend to specialize in a fairly narrow area.
00:03:50
Speaker
But that's not the case for you.
00:03:52
Speaker
So how does that work?
00:03:54
Speaker
And how did that come about?
Personal Connection to Antiques and Valuing Stories
00:03:56
Speaker
I think, let Ben take half of that.
00:03:58
Speaker
I think that half of it is how we entered the business and sort of the collection we started with.
00:04:03
Speaker
Half of it is that we are absolutely, I'll completely embrace materialistic, pretentious individuals when it comes to this field and for our own private collections.
00:04:16
Speaker
But something that we really committed to day one is that we are a small town business.
00:04:22
Speaker
And we want any individual in the town that we live in, in Germantown, to feel comfortable coming in and getting something from us, whether they are a set decorator buying for Warner Brothers or they are a man getting an anniversary gift for his wife.
00:04:37
Speaker
We want to have something they can come in and find.
00:04:40
Speaker
I think that the Hudson Valley is awash with very, very talented dealers who are at the very high end of the market.
00:04:49
Speaker
We're just south of Hudson, which has the iconic Warren Street.
00:04:56
Speaker
I don't know if there's really a need right here for someone else to come in and sell someone a $10,000 dresser.
00:05:04
Speaker
But there is a need to build a connection between people who do not have that budget and beautiful, beautiful things that are not new.
00:05:14
Speaker
And that's something that we take quite personally.
00:05:16
Speaker
But Ben can speak to really the inventory that we started with and how we started.
00:05:21
Speaker
Yeah, and beyond, I mean, before, like, I absolutely can talk about that as it was my collection that we started with, that we were very quickly trying to sell off.
Restoration Work Influences and Approach
00:05:34
Speaker
But in a larger sense, I...
00:05:39
Speaker
We both grew up in households that had a great many antiques, but in the style of it was a couple of generations of collectors who each had their own kind of curio cabinet of things and what they were interested in.
00:05:56
Speaker
And then they passed it all on to a kid who absolutely hated it, but kept it around and then added their things so that they felt better with it.
00:06:04
Speaker
And so we both come from backgrounds and lives where we weren't, it never had the kind of iconoclasm of coming in and cleaning it for a particular style.
00:06:18
Speaker
So we came from...
00:06:20
Speaker
kind of canvases that were already stained with a generalist tinge where it was more that, oh, these two things complement each other even if they're not from the same maker or from the same era or even styles that speak to each other.
00:06:36
Speaker
They just, together, they are very beautiful.
00:06:39
Speaker
But beyond that, I also, one...
00:06:41
Speaker
I can only speak for myself, but when I came into an age where I was reflecting on kind of why I liked some things and not others, I just kind of recoiled to a degree from the siloing of a specialization.
00:06:58
Speaker
and an over deep focus on one aesthetic form or style, because I think that it's all too, it becomes a very, I mean, in the same way that a lot of education today is it's very specialized, very hyper focused, and then no one can see outside of their field.
00:07:19
Speaker
And, um, and so when I started into restoration, we'll probably get into this later, but I started in, um, restoring an arts and crafts house outside of Philadelphia that was built and, or designed and built by William Price, who was an arts and crafts architect, but he was not, and quite consciously not a Frank Lloyd Wright.
00:07:38
Speaker
Or a, you know, or any of the others who, or a Stickley who, you know, made their own genre and then built in that genre.
00:07:46
Speaker
And if you bought a Frank Lloyd Wright house, you got Frank Lloyd Wright's furniture.
00:07:50
Speaker
If you bought a Stickley set, like, then they wanted to sell you the next piece of Stickley.
00:07:56
Speaker
Well, Price was very much, he started in the Gothic and built kind of this Gothic revival style.
00:08:02
Speaker
And then he was hired to design a casino and he laughed at them.
00:08:06
Speaker
He was like, are you insane?
00:08:07
Speaker
I am the opposite of anyone you want designing a casino.
00:08:10
Speaker
And he built a casino that he very consciously and explicitly said,
00:08:14
Speaker
It will be a palace to the worst vices of mankind.
00:08:17
Speaker
And it was the old Blenheim casino in Atlantic City.
00:08:24
Speaker
And it's been demolished.
00:08:26
Speaker
But if you see pictures of it, it is a remarkably, consciously, meticulously hideous building.
00:08:33
Speaker
I love that self-awareness.
00:08:35
Speaker
decadent in a way that is astonishing.
00:08:38
Speaker
And he did a number, he was like, a building's exterior should reflect what is done within it.
00:08:43
Speaker
Why do we build banks that look like palaces?
00:08:45
Speaker
We should build banks that look like moneylenders' dens in every folktale.
00:08:49
Speaker
It should look like a place that you do not want to go.
00:08:52
Speaker
And this is obviously around the time of stock market crash and...
00:08:56
Speaker
So it reflected that.
00:08:58
Speaker
But his whole point was, don't build for a style.
00:09:02
Speaker
Build the people that you're building for.
00:09:04
Speaker
Design for the people who
Historical Significance of Auction Finds
00:09:06
Speaker
are going to live in it.
00:09:06
Speaker
And so when he designed these homes, he knew what the couple or what the family owned.
00:09:13
Speaker
So they had a bunch of the house that I was restoring.
00:09:15
Speaker
They owned a bunch of Federalist antiques and and a couple of Victorian pieces and a bit of, you know, kind of early craftsman style, a bit of Spanish colonial.
00:09:23
Speaker
And he just built a house that was simple and reflective of that with, you know, the intention that their lives would fit in it.
00:09:31
Speaker
And I think that that has always influenced our collecting where it's really, it all could go together.
00:09:39
Speaker
Even if it wasn't all meant to go together.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think that it's building a home.
00:09:46
Speaker
I mean, my family's lived in the same house for over 250 years.
00:09:51
Speaker
And the house has never been refurnished.
00:09:55
Speaker
So we've added to it.
00:09:56
Speaker
It's in Dover, Delaware.
00:09:57
Speaker
It's called the Ridgely House.
00:09:59
Speaker
It's where my mom grew up.
00:10:00
Speaker
It's where my grandfather grew up.
00:10:01
Speaker
It's where every generation before that grew up.
00:10:05
Speaker
Um,
00:10:06
Speaker
It's a really important house historically to American history and the history of the state of Delaware.
00:10:15
Speaker
But it's a family home.
00:10:17
Speaker
And so I grew up where you would open up the dresser where you put your clothes.
00:10:21
Speaker
And there's a note there that my grandmother wrote in the 80s that was to help the tour guide who would show the house every couple months to guests to advise them on the history of the bedroom set.
00:10:33
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:10:34
Speaker
And that was just a normal thing to see.
00:10:37
Speaker
And so you see this accumulation and this collection and these pieces that if you were to go into any sort of high end shop, they'd never say to put together.
00:10:47
Speaker
But I know they go together because I live with them together.
00:10:51
Speaker
And that's something that we really try to work with our clients on is envisioning how their spaces can evolve to reflect them.
00:10:58
Speaker
I think that start to finish design can be an absolutely beautiful thing.
00:11:04
Speaker
I mean, look at the pages of Architectural Digest, like seeing people who take blank plots of land and turn them into these really beautiful,
00:11:13
Speaker
masterpieces of obsession is amazing.
00:11:16
Speaker
But there's also another type of obsession.
00:11:18
Speaker
It takes a much longer time and that's accumulation and it's collection.
00:11:22
Speaker
Which is how most of us inevitably live our lives.
00:11:26
Speaker
It's how most people live their lives and it's so much more approachable and it's so much more warm and it allows room for eccentricity and I mean both Ben and I were very young.
00:11:37
Speaker
I'm 28.
00:11:37
Speaker
He's 29.
00:11:37
Speaker
We've both had a variety of
00:11:42
Speaker
careers and directions in life prior to getting into this business that sort of belie our age.
00:11:51
Speaker
And if we were told that we had to focus on one thing for the rest of our lives because that's the thing we picked when we were 28, that'd be miserable to me.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:00
Speaker
Well, we have.
00:12:01
Speaker
It's just antiques and not Dunlap furniture from one generation of makers.
00:12:07
Speaker
That is sort of the joy of us writing the Objects Lessons column.
00:12:12
Speaker
And I feel like I sort of conned Greg, the editor-in-chief, into letting us do it because he came into the store one day.
00:12:19
Speaker
And I, as I said, work as a writer and I pitched him.
00:12:22
Speaker
I said, hey, I heard that you're now like the head honcho in charge.
00:12:26
Speaker
I want to write this thing and I want to write it with Ben.
00:12:29
Speaker
And it's our excuse to just explore something we don't know much about or are obsessed about and think someone else should be obsessed about.
00:12:38
Speaker
It allows us to wear the badge of generalist quite proudly and to convince people who are far above our rank in this industry to talk to us for hours on end, which is an amazing opportunity.
00:12:54
Speaker
Well, you made a good impression on Greg.
00:12:55
Speaker
I mean, he even published an editor's note about his meeting you and talking with you.
00:13:02
Speaker
That was the first time I had heard about you.
00:13:03
Speaker
So I first time I'd heard about her and we were married.
00:13:07
Speaker
We weren't even married yet.
00:13:09
Speaker
We weren't married yet.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:11
Speaker
Sorry.
00:13:12
Speaker
OK, so I want to I want to sort of ground us a little bit here because we could talk all day, but there is actually a curious object that is the focal point of our conversation today, ostensibly.
00:13:24
Speaker
And I think it will reveal a little bit about your mentality and your approach to this business.
00:13:32
Speaker
And there's a great story behind it.
00:13:34
Speaker
So the Curious Object is actually a box that didn't come from some fancy Christie's or Sotheby's sale.
00:13:45
Speaker
You've told me that you basically found it on the riverside.
00:13:50
Speaker
So tell me about discovering this box and what you learned about it.
00:13:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:58
Speaker
So maybe Ben can give a little description of it first so people can imagine it.
00:14:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:04
Speaker
And we will have pictures on magazineheadteeth.com.
00:14:09
Speaker
But for our listeners, yeah.
00:14:11
Speaker
I mean, how big is it?
00:14:14
Speaker
I just was saying, I don't have the measurements because I don't
00:14:18
Speaker
What's funny is it's actually about 12 feet away from us right now, but it's wrapped in like 15 layers of bubble wrap in the middle of a move.
00:14:25
Speaker
The size of a basketball?
00:14:28
Speaker
A basketball would just barely fit in it.
00:14:30
Speaker
No, no, no, no, I'm sorry.
00:14:31
Speaker
A basketball would fit in the fully wrapped package that it's in currently.
00:14:35
Speaker
A basketball would just, the inner core of a basketball, if you turn a basketball into a square, like if you cut the roundness out of a basketball, it would fit.
00:14:45
Speaker
It's probably, how large is that?
00:14:47
Speaker
Well, now I feel like Kevin's going to judge me for not knowing the size of the basketball.
00:14:51
Speaker
Well, we're past the basketball, but how large are my fingers?
00:14:53
Speaker
I'd say it's 10 inches square.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:55
Speaker
It's about, yes, I would say it's 10 inches.
00:14:57
Speaker
It took us a while to get around to that, but 10 inches.
00:15:01
Speaker
I could take that again if you'd like.
00:15:04
Speaker
I would say that it's about 10 inches across and maybe 12 inches tall.
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:09
Speaker
And it's a wooden box, but it has iron banding.
00:15:13
Speaker
Yes.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:15
Speaker
On corners and or edging and and corners.
00:15:20
Speaker
So what caught your eye about it?
00:15:21
Speaker
Do you want to tell the story?
00:15:25
Speaker
Well, yeah.
00:15:26
Speaker
So what really I was skeptical.
00:15:29
Speaker
Should we just what caught our eye about it and then tell the story next?
00:15:33
Speaker
Sure.
00:15:33
Speaker
Why don't you say why you why you decided to bid on it?
00:15:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:35
Speaker
All right.
00:15:37
Speaker
And then I'll tell you why I was miserable the entire time.
00:15:39
Speaker
There you go.
00:15:41
Speaker
So when we first saw it, I thought that the iron looked hand-forged or competently faked, if it was a fake.
00:15:51
Speaker
And it was a curious size, but I thought that the finishing hit was crazy, and it seemed an inelegant box to fake if someone were faking.
00:16:07
Speaker
But too kind of well done to be a low quality fake if it were faked.
00:16:12
Speaker
So I thought that it was something that was striking in kind of its understatedness.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, and there wasn't really a description to guide us.
00:16:25
Speaker
I mean, we were sitting in folding chairs in an unheated warehouse.
00:16:30
Speaker
Warehouse itself is a generous term.
00:16:34
Speaker
In the middle of winter, we remember it as being one of the first things that came up for auction.
00:16:41
Speaker
But I actually think, based on the fact I remember not being able to feel my fingers anymore, that it was a bit, it was after like a parade of G.I.
00:16:49
Speaker
Joe figurines and Barbies.
00:16:50
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:16:51
Speaker
And we were pretty frustrated because we were sort of scared that nothing we were interested in would come up.
00:16:59
Speaker
It's a pretty free form auction format.
00:17:03
Speaker
And we were the youngest people there by approximately two centuries.
00:17:08
Speaker
And it was also my first time ever at an auction like this and our first time together at an auction.
00:17:15
Speaker
And I knew that Ben at that point had a really strong affliction called shopping.
00:17:26
Speaker
And he really liked buying things.
00:17:28
Speaker
And so I sort of went into, yeah, antiques.
00:17:31
Speaker
Things is not fair.
00:17:32
Speaker
Antiques and high-value antiques.
00:17:34
Speaker
He's very good at spotting things.
00:17:35
Speaker
It's dangerous.
00:17:36
Speaker
But I sort of went in feeling like I was going to have to hold him back because I have the opposite affliction, which is that I am consistently terrified that I'm broke despite the fact it's never happened.
00:17:49
Speaker
Um, and this box came up for auction and the description that was said by the auctioneer was, this is a kind of nice box, locked, no key, may have a thousand dollars in it, but probably not.
00:18:05
Speaker
Feels pretty empty.
00:18:06
Speaker
Feels pretty.
00:18:06
Speaker
It's a nice box.
00:18:07
Speaker
Let's start the bidding at $50.
00:18:09
Speaker
Yeah, so they started the bidding and then no one bid and it went, they lowered the price.
00:18:14
Speaker
No one bid, they lowered the price.
00:18:15
Speaker
Ben shoots his hand up.
00:18:17
Speaker
So this was a Dutch auction.
00:18:19
Speaker
going backwards it's not supposed to be it's not and if i may for that it was just very cold that day it was the first item which is why i was like i'll be kind and at least let this one sell because it seems to be the first item of the day and you know uh and so i i i bet i believe i mean that's
00:18:38
Speaker
We have slightly divergent memories, but either way, he ended up winning it for about $25.
00:18:43
Speaker
We just stashed it underneath our chairs.
00:18:46
Speaker
The auction went on.
00:18:47
Speaker
We ended up with a van full of stuff.
00:18:49
Speaker
We spent an eye-watering sum that day of about $300.
00:18:54
Speaker
And I felt quite... Yeah, I was just... I was like, how did we possibly spend that much?
00:19:01
Speaker
Now I laugh, obviously, because that is...
00:19:06
Speaker
That is so chump change compared to what happens now.
00:19:12
Speaker
But we ended up with this box, and I really sort of forgot it existed.
00:19:16
Speaker
Perhaps I hoped that it hadn't happened until Ben took it out to his workshop and came back into the house about an hour later, and he said, one, I got it open, and guess what?
00:19:27
Speaker
There's keys inside.
00:19:28
Speaker
So that's super helpful.
00:19:30
Speaker
So now it is a box with keys, and there's also a note.
00:19:35
Speaker
And what did the note say?
00:19:38
Speaker
So the note said, this is the worst framing of that.
00:19:46
Speaker
The note said, General Peter Gansford used box on Mohawk River in expedition against Indians, great grandfather of William L. Martin.
00:19:58
Speaker
And then on the back, it was dated.
00:20:01
Speaker
November 25th, 1943.
00:20:03
Speaker
Wow.
00:20:04
Speaker
Okay, so let's unpack that.
00:20:07
Speaker
So 1943, somebody wrote this note, presumably about their great grandfather.
00:20:13
Speaker
And this is a fellow named Peter Gansford.
00:20:16
Speaker
Now, did you already know who Peter Gansford was?
00:20:20
Speaker
I did not.
00:20:21
Speaker
I had no idea.
00:20:22
Speaker
Ben knew immediately.
00:20:24
Speaker
I knew Peter Gansford as Colonel Gansford of the Battle of Fort Stanwix, of the Saratoga campaign in 1777.
00:20:36
Speaker
I'm sure listeners are all familiar with the Saratoga campaign, but maybe just to refresh our memories, what was that all about?
00:20:44
Speaker
The Saratoga campaign was when Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne or... All right, I'll stop, Pippa.
00:20:52
Speaker
No, I love this.
00:20:54
Speaker
I'm always impressed, so go for it.
00:20:56
Speaker
Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne led his campaign.
00:20:59
Speaker
troops on a campaign down ostensibly from canada through new york to hopefully sever the rebellious colonies in half um so that they could take the northern colonies and where they because the british believed that the southern colonies were right with um tory sympathizers and so they said we'll cut them in half and then we'll deal with the rebels to the north
00:21:25
Speaker
And he was beaten at Saratoga by Benedict Arnold or rather by... No, I'll just... Yeah, I'll stump for Benedict Arnold in this early campaign by Benedict Arnold.
00:21:35
Speaker
He won the battle.
00:21:37
Speaker
And so as a part of that, the British had first advanced on a series of forts of Fort George, which was also under Gansford's command fell.
00:21:46
Speaker
They actually just retreated from it and then they took their stand at Stanwyck's where they withstood siege for about three weeks.
00:21:55
Speaker
and I'm looking at my notes to find there.
00:21:57
Speaker
So, oh, yeah, in defense of Fort Stanwyck's about three weeks, and then they were relieved by Benedict Arnold, and Gansford had, you know, been commended by Congress, and John Adams said, he's shown that a man can hold a fort, which I guess was high praise, but just sounds pretty, pretty blousy.
00:22:13
Speaker
It's like, that is accurate, John.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:15
Speaker
That's what he did.
00:22:19
Speaker
But so that's... I knew Gansford from that campaign.
00:22:22
Speaker
I didn't know what the element on the Mohawk River was.
00:22:28
Speaker
And so it wasn't until later that I read about his being employed in the Sullivan Expedition, which was in 1779.
00:22:35
Speaker
And it's a pretty... It's a pretty...
00:22:45
Speaker
questionable campaign actually.
00:22:48
Speaker
I think that for as we as we can recognize now the way in which our country has treated native peoples throughout our history has left much to be desired.
00:23:06
Speaker
Um, and so it's interesting to now sort of have this box that was taken on, uh, based on the note, taken on an expedition that, uh,
00:23:18
Speaker
When it happened, the understanding of that expedition was one thing.
00:23:22
Speaker
When this note was written, the understanding that expedition was another.
00:23:25
Speaker
And now, today, in 2020, the understanding of that expedition is, yet again, sort of recontextualized.
00:23:35
Speaker
And to me, that's a really interesting piece of its history.
00:23:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great difficulty that the Iroquois Confederacy, which is part of the forces against which the Sullivan campaign was sent, were very powerful and very fearsome and quite very feared at the time.
00:24:01
Speaker
And so it means that
00:24:03
Speaker
There was a level of celebration even into the 1940s for someone who participated in a campaign like that.
00:24:15
Speaker
Whereas now, and in light of subsequent events, it takes on a very different cast.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:24
Speaker
We understand better.
00:24:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:27
Speaker
But, but, oh, so, so back to the, to the box.
00:24:30
Speaker
So we, um, I did more reading on it, um, you know, kind of bragged about it as much as possible to, to immediate family.
00:24:39
Speaker
No one was as excited as we were.
00:24:41
Speaker
It was actually really upsetting.
00:24:42
Speaker
All of a sudden, I think we both realized that we decided to go into a, a line of work in which, uh, our entire life may be plagued by the feeling that no one quite understands.
00:24:53
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:24:55
Speaker
Some people were excited, but it was the equivalent of if we found $75 in a hotel safe.
00:25:00
Speaker
Exactly.
00:25:00
Speaker
I was like, well, that's nice.
00:25:02
Speaker
Look at that.
00:25:03
Speaker
Isn't that lovely?
00:25:04
Speaker
And it's like, well, come on, it's a bit better.
00:25:09
Speaker
So tell me about how you felt.
00:25:11
Speaker
I mean, when you found this note, when you started connecting these dots, how did that make you feel?
00:25:16
Speaker
I immediately felt like all of my assumptions on it being a kind of nice box were completely justified.
00:25:23
Speaker
I mean...
00:25:24
Speaker
I think the first couple hours I was being reminded every 20 minutes that I should blindly trust Ben's vision and that $25 was a great deal and we could have paid five times as much.
00:25:37
Speaker
Obviously, it's now probably 500 times as much.
00:25:40
Speaker
And I've been totally, totally fine with it.
00:25:44
Speaker
But I think that for both of us, like so much of what we seek in antiques is context.
00:25:49
Speaker
is story.
00:25:50
Speaker
And as shop owners, especially when our retail store was open, the most common question that we get from people is, well, where is this from?
00:25:59
Speaker
What is this story?
00:26:01
Speaker
And the reality is that for so many of the items that pass through our hands, the best we can do is really a broad stroke sketch of what a story might be.
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:12
Speaker
Like where it could have originated.
00:26:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:14
Speaker
And when a story falls into your lap,
00:26:18
Speaker
It's it's astonishing.
00:26:20
Speaker
And it.
00:26:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:23
Speaker
And to be fair.
00:26:24
Speaker
So our next step, because really the the down the road feeling when things had kind of the jubilation had settled was, all right, well, we'd really better check to make sure that this isn't just fake.
00:26:36
Speaker
or that someone had written a note and then put it in, eventually round its way into a different box or something else.
00:26:43
Speaker
Yeah, or people get confused and forget their family histories.
00:26:47
Speaker
Yeah, or an embellished story that just, you know, someone had an old box and they're like, oh, let me tell you about this box, kid.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:54
Speaker
So we sought out the staff of Peebles Island, which is the state of New York's restoration and antiques maintenance hub, and
00:27:12
Speaker
And they don't do work on private pieces.
00:27:15
Speaker
They don't want anyone else to ask them if they will, because they get that all the time.
00:27:23
Speaker
Sorry listeners.
00:27:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:27:25
Speaker
And sorry us, honestly.
00:27:26
Speaker
It's more like, please, though?
00:27:28
Speaker
Just this one?
00:27:30
Speaker
But they were willing to meet about the piece and just give me their, you know, they could not assess it or appraise it for its value, but they were willing to give their professional opinion on kind of their thoughts on, you know, the authenticity of it.
00:27:50
Speaker
And it turned out, and that's all they told me when I got there, it turned out that they had a somewhat ulterior motive for being willing to see it, but they first looked at it and they kind of came to the conclusion they think that
00:28:05
Speaker
it is in fact from the 18th century it uh you know nothing about it is um is a tell against it like obviously the the provenance is um anecdotal because of the note but i believe the the comment in in their you know summation was like uh it's too random and uninteresting a piece to have likely been fake i'm like yeah all right it's too
00:28:30
Speaker
That is the salvation of so many stories of provenance.
00:28:34
Speaker
Well, if you were faking this, wouldn't you make it a lot better?
00:28:38
Speaker
Wouldn't you do this, but more interestingly, for a larger sum?
00:28:44
Speaker
So they believe that it's a personal medical chest that the general may have taken on campaign.
00:28:51
Speaker
And as it turns out, it is the only physical object to survive from the campaign on the Sullivan expedition.
00:29:00
Speaker
So there are no other hats or uniforms or anything that has made it down the centuries.
00:29:08
Speaker
And so when before COVID, we were discussing they're using it for an exhibition on New York State's whatever anniversary they're coming up on, which is now on hiatus just because of we don't know when.
00:29:28
Speaker
they'll be able to do it.
00:29:29
Speaker
But that was a very exciting and interesting and rewarding thing to learn that not only is it a piece of history that we were able to save, but it's the last bit of history from something that, you know, was particularly rewarding.
00:29:44
Speaker
Yeah, and I think one of our goals with it is to be able to loan it.
00:29:48
Speaker
We...
00:29:51
Speaker
don't want to use it, which most of the antiques that we choose to keep for ourselves, we use quite heavily.
00:30:00
Speaker
We don't have... Have you chosen to keep this one?
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we'll be keeping it.
00:30:06
Speaker
We've never discussed selling it.
00:30:10
Speaker
What we have discussed is loaning it.
00:30:11
Speaker
So putting it on long-term loan, most likely to the state if they remain interested, because I think that the educational value of it
00:30:21
Speaker
is quite good.
00:30:23
Speaker
The ability to connect a material object to a event and a story is
Family History's Impact on Antiques Approach
00:30:29
Speaker
so important.
00:30:29
Speaker
And if it's one of the only material or the only material object that connects to this story, that's a really valuable thing.
00:30:36
Speaker
But I don't think either of us right now have come to terms with the idea of selling it.
00:30:42
Speaker
So we haven't even pursued that as an option.
00:30:46
Speaker
particularly when we learned that Gansford was the maternal grandfather of Herman Melville.
00:30:51
Speaker
I mean, I was just like, we can never sell it.
00:30:54
Speaker
It's worth too much.
00:30:55
Speaker
I mean, my God.
00:30:56
Speaker
I'm laughing.
00:30:57
Speaker
That is extremely cool.
00:31:01
Speaker
Unfortunately, that fact apparently is more important than almost any other fact of Peter Gansford.
00:31:06
Speaker
So finding a biography of him that doesn't just like then say, also, it was Herman Melville's grandfather.
00:31:12
Speaker
You're like, yeah, great.
00:31:15
Speaker
This is a little bit of a tangent, but I was talking with a colleague of mine recently about this notion of provenance and association with important historical figures and so on.
00:31:25
Speaker
And we deal largely in antique English silver.
00:31:30
Speaker
And so the provenance often relates to important dukes and earls and barons and that sort of thing.
00:31:40
Speaker
And my colleague made the point that
00:31:43
Speaker
You know, oftentimes the problem that we have with provenance is
00:31:47
Speaker
if it didn't belong to the Queen of England or to George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, who cares?
00:31:55
Speaker
And even people who played extremely significant historical roles, there is the value that the provenance adds to those objects versus the value that the provenance adds when it did come from Thomas Jefferson.
00:32:11
Speaker
It's almost as if the provenance may as well not be there.
00:32:17
Speaker
And Gansevert is one of these figures who, you know, I mean, if you look up his Wikipedia page, as I've done, there is a significant amount of information.
00:32:26
Speaker
He is a figure of some public and historical interest, you know, played an important role in the birth of the country.
00:32:35
Speaker
And yet, my guess is if you walk down the street, even in a Hudson Valley town, and polled people about their knowledge of Peter Gansevoort, you might be disappointed.
00:32:48
Speaker
I'm just going out on a limb there.
00:32:50
Speaker
Sorry, go ahead.
00:32:54
Speaker
It's the difficulty of as you grow more distant from major events.
00:33:00
Speaker
One of my favorite popular historians who also has a podcast, his name is Mike Duncan, has made the quip that in about another...
00:33:11
Speaker
500 to a thousand years if the united states is still around this story will be that george washington single-handedly birthed the nation and that he was born from a cherry tree and that his teeth were wooden so he can prove it like the legend just grows and encompasses all other roles within major events such that by the time that it you know even to our day like you know who was peter gansford he was oh he was on the sullivan expedition what was the sullivan you know and it's
00:33:40
Speaker
Who were the Tories?
00:33:41
Speaker
They were in New York City.
00:33:42
Speaker
It just becomes this background noise that is distracting.
00:33:46
Speaker
But that's what makes it so interesting to have an object, right?
00:33:50
Speaker
As opposed to oral tradition or other kinds of preservation of history.
00:33:56
Speaker
Because the object gives you that physical focal point.
00:34:01
Speaker
That excuse for conversation almost.
00:34:03
Speaker
I mean, here we are talking about...
00:34:05
Speaker
General Gansevoort on a very popular and widely listened to podcast.
00:34:12
Speaker
Not to toot your own horn.
00:34:15
Speaker
I think that something, the reason I get so excited, despite if you'd asked me when we got the box who Peter Gansevoort was, I would have told you sounds like the name of a hotel.
00:34:30
Speaker
I come from a family where, for me, history has always been personal.
00:34:37
Speaker
On one side, it's the Biddle family, one of the oldest banking families in America.
00:34:44
Speaker
And growing up, I would take AP U.S. history tests and see my relatives in the political cartoons I was supposed to critique.
00:34:54
Speaker
On the other side of my family is one of the oldest Delaware families in our country, the Ridgelys.
00:35:00
Speaker
As I mentioned, we've lived in the same house since the 1760s.
00:35:05
Speaker
It was built in 1726.
00:35:09
Speaker
History for me has always been intensely personal.
00:35:13
Speaker
And I didn't really understand why until I got older and realized that other people didn't have things they could point to and say, that's my history.
00:35:25
Speaker
And I think that the beautiful thing about a material culture and when you have provenance and you have those stories is it gives more people that opportunity to point to things and say, oh, I can build a bridge between myself and that object.
00:35:38
Speaker
And when you build that bridge, you create a whole new field for understanding.
00:35:45
Speaker
And that's a really exciting thing.
00:35:58
Speaker
back with Pippa Biddle and Benjamin Davidson.
00:36:01
Speaker
Thank you for listening.
00:36:02
Speaker
If you'd like to support Curious Objects, the best thing to do is to leave a rating and review on whatever podcast app you're using right now.
00:36:09
Speaker
It won't hurt, I promise, and it'll help new listeners find their way here.
00:36:13
Speaker
I love hearing your comments and your suggestions for future episodes, so please be in touch.
00:36:17
Speaker
You can email me at curiousobjectspodcast at gmail.com or on Instagram at objectiveinterest.
00:36:24
Speaker
I also have a favor to ask on behalf of the Magazine Antiques.
00:36:28
Speaker
They've put together a listener survey at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:36:32
Speaker
So go there, scroll down, and click the link if you'd like to help them and me understand more about our audience.
00:36:39
Speaker
Much appreciated.
00:36:41
Speaker
Thank you.
00:36:48
Speaker
So Ben, tell me about, so we've talked a little bit about sort of how Pippa's background and how your family history has primed you for a life invested and interested in antique objects.
00:37:05
Speaker
But Ben, you're coming to this from the angle of restoration, of craftsmanship.
00:37:14
Speaker
Tell me more about that.
00:37:17
Speaker
Well, I mean, I also grew up in a house full of antiques, not with the direct provenance of the Ridgelys.
00:37:31
Speaker
So there was a familiarity and comfortability that I think is pretty helpful in getting into this field.
00:37:40
Speaker
Um, just the number of people who have come into the shop and then like are afraid to touch anything.
00:37:45
Speaker
And we're like, oh, let me just open that for you.
00:37:46
Speaker
Like, nah, it's fine.
00:37:48
Speaker
Um, but, uh, but then, yeah, after college, I, I studied, um, medieval history and, um, constitutional development.
00:37:57
Speaker
which was useful in life.
00:38:02
Speaker
And so after graduating, I kind of jumped around in things that I could do and then had a wonderful opportunity fall upon me that...
00:38:15
Speaker
to be the live-in caretaker of the Thunderbird Lodge outside of Philadelphia that was built by the arts and crafts architect William Price.
00:38:24
Speaker
It was his first kind of ground up remodel.
00:38:29
Speaker
It was a stone dairy barn in an old mill town called Rose Valley that...
00:38:33
Speaker
He turned the old stone barn into a two-story studio space for this artist couple and then built the somewhat gothic-inspired, but really largely just American crafts, you know, kind of simple craftsman, contemporary, very...
00:38:56
Speaker
straightforward and traditional without really any kind of directly linkable elements that rambled off of the stone barn.
00:39:06
Speaker
It has an octagonal tower in the middle of it.
00:39:09
Speaker
It's a very beautiful home that had been in, it had been sold by the original couple that was built for towards the end of their lives to a family.
00:39:18
Speaker
And then it stayed in that family for the next
00:39:21
Speaker
um what 80 plus years um and so after they they sold it to the town's museum and which at that point didn't have a physical location and so the town's museum was the just beginning the process of removing everything that had been kind of added or done to the interiors over the hundred years so the museum uh purchased or
00:39:48
Speaker
The museum obtained the house, I think.
00:39:52
Speaker
And they were just starting the process of restoring it back to how it had originally been designed and built.
00:40:00
Speaker
And they were looking for a live-in caretaker.
00:40:04
Speaker
And so I was selected for that.
00:40:06
Speaker
It was supposed to be like a 10-year project where the rent was like $80 a month.
00:40:12
Speaker
It was really an amazing opportunity to... They were like, yeah, it's...
00:40:16
Speaker
It's basically 5,000 square feet of living space, then each of the studios was another 4,000 square feet.
00:40:23
Speaker
And so they were like, furnish it however you want.
00:40:26
Speaker
We won't be using the space for 10 years.
00:40:28
Speaker
And I was like, great, can do.
00:40:32
Speaker
And hence the eventual storage unit of antiques that we then had to sell off, because I did that.
00:40:38
Speaker
But then as they were bringing in tradespeople to start pulling walls that had been thrown up back and things like that, I just kind of popped in and was like, you know, can I watch how you do that?
00:40:51
Speaker
Or eventually, like, can I, you know, I think I can do this one myself.
00:40:55
Speaker
And so just kind of learned very, you know, kind of hands-on.
00:41:00
Speaker
It was a very fun process.
00:41:01
Speaker
And
00:41:03
Speaker
engaging and then we were we finished the majority of the restoration work about eight years ahead of schedule.
00:41:13
Speaker
I thought that was great because you know I did a great job and yay.
00:41:17
Speaker
And instead, I had cut myself out of eight years of very low-rent mansion life.
00:41:25
Speaker
And so I kicked myself pretty quickly.
00:41:27
Speaker
But I then started doing interior restoration work for a number of landlords in West Philly.
00:41:36
Speaker
And then came back to New York as my parents had moved here.
00:41:41
Speaker
into a home that my grandmother had owned and they needed some help with handling restoration of these historic properties.
00:41:50
Speaker
And so I started working here and through the whole of the process, I kind of just tinkered more and more with furniture.
00:41:56
Speaker
and other kind of historic objects, mostly wood, a little bit of metal, a little bit of gilding, things like that.
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:05
Speaker
So let me ask, so as a craftsman, how does that change the way that you look at antiques?
00:42:11
Speaker
I mean, with the box, you instantly recognize that it was either handmade hand wrought iron or it was a very good fake.
00:42:19
Speaker
So that's a detail that stood out to you because you're familiar with the materials.
00:42:25
Speaker
How else does that affect the way that you approach the antiques business?
00:42:29
Speaker
There have been a lot.
00:42:31
Speaker
Well, the wonderful element is that we can kind of take objects that have really been pushed beyond the brink for most collectors and most buyers, especially at a middle range, like not at the highest tier.
00:42:45
Speaker
When people will...
00:42:47
Speaker
throw up their hands on the thing and say, like, oh, it would be great if, you know, so-and-so hadn't broken this drawer, if, you know, this stain weren't here, if it hadn't whatever, whatever, whatever.
00:42:58
Speaker
And we not only can do that work, but it means that we can bid on them for far lower, or we can pick them up and actually add value to them, which, you know,
00:43:11
Speaker
We get to punch above our weight a little bit.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:14
Speaker
Because we're able to purchase things that are at a price point because of sort of mistreatment, maltreatment, that otherwise would be completely inaccessible to us.
00:43:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:29
Speaker
And Ben is very, very good at what he does and is able to bring them back to a state where they will never be...
00:43:38
Speaker
unrepaired pieces.
00:43:39
Speaker
They will never be sort of the pristine, perfect example of what something is, but they will be beautiful, beautiful pieces that are fully functional that deserve many more years in a home.
00:43:51
Speaker
We also don't, our goal is not, like we could restore them where, you know, we would fabricate new pieces and we would remove the old ones that were broken or damaged or altered and make it so that the repair was not
00:44:06
Speaker
would appear that it never occurred.
00:44:10
Speaker
I don't like that.
00:44:12
Speaker
I don't want to do that.
00:44:14
Speaker
If a client has a piece that they need, absolutely, obviously.
00:44:18
Speaker
But for our own one- Your goal isn't to deceive, in other words.
00:44:21
Speaker
Exactly.
00:44:23
Speaker
I think that a
00:44:26
Speaker
A repair is part of that story.
00:44:28
Speaker
It is part of the piece.
00:44:31
Speaker
I think that's one of the fun things, because right now more than half of our business is restoration, repair work, furniture and lighting mostly.
00:44:39
Speaker
for clients.
00:44:41
Speaker
And so much of the fun of that process, at least for myself, seeing as I don't do any of the restoration work, so I just get the great joy of showing it off once it's done, is explaining to a client precisely what was done so that they can see where it was done, so that they can understand what went into it and the story that sort of has been added on to this piece through that process.
00:45:04
Speaker
And I think that a lot of what Ben does is truly an art form.
00:45:08
Speaker
I mean, using linen to bind cracks, these things that you don't.
00:45:14
Speaker
People, people don't.
00:45:16
Speaker
Obviously, people still do this.
00:45:17
Speaker
We do this.
00:45:18
Speaker
There are amazing people around the world who still do this type of work, but there are fewer and fewer of them.
Sustainability and Appeal to Younger Generations
00:45:24
Speaker
And typically it is priced at a point where it is a type of work that's fairly inaccessible to most people.
00:45:31
Speaker
And just like we approach our retail inventory with accessibility in the front of our minds, we approach the restoration or repair work we do with accessibility at the front of our minds.
00:45:44
Speaker
And to be able to offer...
00:45:47
Speaker
really beautiful work to our community at a price that may not be a bargain.
00:45:56
Speaker
It's an expensive process to fix things, but that's far more accessible than what is typically found.
00:46:03
Speaker
We're able to continue those stories.
00:46:07
Speaker
Yeah, the linen repair in particular, which is, it shows, but it's a nice way of like, if you have cracked drawers in a dresser, using a piece of linen with, that's kind of seeded into glue, like a hide glue or a yellow carpenter's glue will also work.
00:46:27
Speaker
It kind of knits the, like a gauze on a wound, like it helps the wood to knit.
00:46:32
Speaker
it's a like knit it's like surgical mash it works like surgical mash that's yeah that more than fascinating um but it was it was fun when we were actually at the Ridgely house and I opened um this a grandfather clock that's in one of the rooms um and inside there was this very bit like very you know
00:46:50
Speaker
You could see at a glance that it was this very long strip of linen where clearly the moisture in the room had caused the clock to split in its back panel.
00:46:59
Speaker
And someone had just, you know, used the same exact technique in the exact same way.
00:47:02
Speaker
Probably 150 years ago.
00:47:04
Speaker
Yeah, and I called Pip over and was like, look, see, see, it's attested.
00:47:07
Speaker
So you can see that it is in fact a correct repair.
00:47:11
Speaker
I can say with absolute certainty that room, the design of that room or the furniture, where each piece of furniture is in that room has not changed since the 1920s, as shown in American interiors coffee table books.
00:47:28
Speaker
And in the drawers of the piece.
00:47:30
Speaker
So like in one of the drawers, you'll open it and be like, this is this is like a very like, you know, a photo from the 30s of this shelf with the exact same objects in the exact same place.
00:47:43
Speaker
We should dust more.
00:47:44
Speaker
OK.
00:47:44
Speaker
But, you know, it's really interesting.
00:47:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:49
Speaker
And I think that's that's something that.
00:47:51
Speaker
Ben spends a lot of time researching and trying to gain a deeper understanding in because unfortunately, one of the struggles with being in this field is acquiring information.
00:47:59
Speaker
And it is figuring out how to learn as much as you can.
00:48:06
Speaker
And for him, for you, this a lot of this process has been learning by doing.
00:48:10
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:48:11
Speaker
learning by researching and reading.
00:48:13
Speaker
And we maintain an ever-growing library of what I call reference books, but many of them are antique books that describe things like how to wire a multi-speed
00:48:29
Speaker
This one took me a long time.
00:48:30
Speaker
I'm not an electrician and we had someone who needed a multi-speed and I had like six books on like, you know, horsepower engines and early, you know, just like, so you want to wire your house.
00:48:42
Speaker
Well, first thing you've got to decide is gas or electric.
00:48:45
Speaker
And you're like, hmm, for the lighting?
00:48:48
Speaker
This is a very old book.
00:48:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:51
Speaker
Very good.
00:48:52
Speaker
I think we'll go with electric, thanks.
00:48:54
Speaker
But it's cool because YouTube is useful for lots of things and we can find out how to do almost anything on YouTube.
00:49:00
Speaker
But there are some things that you do in fact need to find a 1910 manual for restoration that at the time was already talking about things that were old and use that as your guide.
00:49:13
Speaker
A lot of old timers have told me that they, and then, you know, which one tells you a lot about the editing process in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, that you could write that sentence and no one would be like, just cut this.
00:49:23
Speaker
People have told me.
00:49:24
Speaker
What's wrong with you?
00:49:25
Speaker
But, um, but also, you know, it's, it's, and it is a combination of, you know, I, I have, uh, far too many books on, you know, woodworking and on, you know, contemporary furniture makers who are describing their, you know, the processes that they know and the,
00:49:41
Speaker
and the more modern tricks or methods that they use.
00:49:45
Speaker
And it is a common, especially if you have to fabricate a piece on a timeline, that I don't have a workshop of apprentices who can do all of the prep and turn out pieces the way that the speed that would be possible if there were still
00:50:02
Speaker
journeymen around.
00:50:06
Speaker
One day.
00:50:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:07
Speaker
Well, so we're pining about the past, but let's turn to the future because both of you have expressed a kind of optimism about the future that is really nice to hear.
00:50:19
Speaker
And that, to be honest, you don't always hear from antique steelers, particularly older generations of antique steelers these days.
00:50:28
Speaker
And I would just like to hear what your take is on what the future looks like for people who are interested in these well-crafted antique objects.
00:50:40
Speaker
Well, our view on that can come off somewhat harshly to...
00:50:51
Speaker
The real story is that we got into this after the bubble popped, like after the kind of the price ventures.
00:50:59
Speaker
The American furniture market sort of collapses.
00:51:01
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:51:03
Speaker
And so where what we hear is constantly,
00:51:07
Speaker
This is nothing like what it used to be.
00:51:09
Speaker
You know, like, I paid so much more for this.
00:51:13
Speaker
We used to see, like, I mean, we go to these country auctions where every third person is griping about how a certain folk art frame would have gone for $12,000, and now it's going for $120,000.
00:51:24
Speaker
But for us, we've always seen it at, if even $120,000, we've always seen it at $30,000, $40,000.
00:51:29
Speaker
And so...
00:51:34
Speaker
our entry point was such where we can't help but view it.
00:51:39
Speaker
It's like, well, you paid a lot for that then.
00:51:43
Speaker
That's a lot to have shelled out for a thing that our whole context is just a different bracket.
00:51:50
Speaker
So there's the market consideration, but then there's also you've talked about the excitement that you've seen from your clients who are not necessarily octogenarians.
00:52:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the funny things when we first started Quitner was that we were hearing from a lot of people that young people don't like antiques, which at the time I was 26.
00:52:16
Speaker
The fact they were even saying that to me was a little bit funny.
00:52:20
Speaker
Because I'm like, well, you're disproving yourself by having your conversation with me.
00:52:23
Speaker
Exhibit A. That's an okay boomer moment.
00:52:26
Speaker
Exactly.
00:52:27
Speaker
Exhibit A, the two of us.
00:52:29
Speaker
But also, just through the...
00:52:33
Speaker
sort of survey that is our clientele, most of the people who we work with are under 50.
00:52:41
Speaker
I'd say half of them are under 40.
00:52:43
Speaker
Our market skews young, not old.
00:52:48
Speaker
And there's increasing enthusiasm.
00:52:51
Speaker
I think that one of the things that I find really exciting as someone who's both of us are quite passionate about environmentalism and sustainability is
00:53:01
Speaker
Antiques are the greenest furniture you can buy.
00:53:03
Speaker
They've already been made.
00:53:05
Speaker
You don't need to go buy sustainable wood new stuff.
00:53:10
Speaker
Go buy something old.
00:53:11
Speaker
Especially if it's near you.
00:53:13
Speaker
I want the antiques industry to do a Got Milk style industry-wide ad campaign of it's green, buy old.
00:53:21
Speaker
It is a bumper sticker already.
00:53:23
Speaker
Go green, buy antiques.
00:53:24
Speaker
It is?
00:53:25
Speaker
Well, I will have to get one of those bumper stickers because it is one of my favorite conversations with my peers.
00:53:31
Speaker
And we've seen that among people our age is that they're identifying that more and more.
00:53:36
Speaker
I think also that this sort of hotel aesthetic has gotten old.
00:53:43
Speaker
Having every room look the same and having every space feel sterile is getting old to people.
00:53:49
Speaker
They want to feel comfortable.
00:53:50
Speaker
They want to feel at home and they want to feel warm.
00:53:53
Speaker
And I think that...
00:53:54
Speaker
One of the things I love seeing is more and more people who are attracted to wood where you can actually see the grain because it hasn't painted over 15 times.
00:54:02
Speaker
And just they want to feel grounded to something.
00:54:09
Speaker
And antiques provide that grounding.
00:54:12
Speaker
And so for us, it's just been it's been sort of like...
00:54:17
Speaker
operating in a, sometimes it feels like we're operating in a parallel universe because we're hearing from people all the time that this market is dying and no one's going into it and there's no money to be made and yet we're in it and young people are shopping with us and we're making money.
00:54:34
Speaker
It's the difficulty of, on the one hand, a lot of it is market cycles, where wood furniture showing the grain is we are seeing people be more and more open to it, and it is coming back.
00:54:47
Speaker
The reality is that in our lifetime, it will also go out again.
00:54:50
Speaker
If it does come back in its full...
00:54:52
Speaker
It will go out again because people will have a bunch of it and then they'll no longer want it because they'll see something else.
00:54:58
Speaker
Or their kids want it.
00:55:00
Speaker
Yeah, and that will keep happening.
00:55:02
Speaker
What's a more profound shift from my view is that the reason...
00:55:11
Speaker
Young people, from what I've seen, are attracted to these antiques.
00:55:14
Speaker
It's very different from the reason that their grandparents or their parents were, which is instead of it being about its antiquity or about its story or about where it came from or prominence.
00:55:26
Speaker
It's far more about its rep-re-ability, that they can repair it, that it can be maintained, it will not fall apart after the third move to a third new apartment.
00:55:36
Speaker
You can get the thing that you love and keep it.
00:55:39
Speaker
It will survive, the move or the breakup or whatever it is.
00:55:45
Speaker
It's not self-obsolescent.
00:55:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:47
Speaker
It's not composite.
00:55:49
Speaker
It's not a poured material that doesn't... Like, Ikea's furniture is fine if you never move it again.
00:55:55
Speaker
Like, if you set it up and it stays in one place forever, yeah, it's fine.
00:55:59
Speaker
Like, it will be fine.
00:55:59
Speaker
Provided there's no flood or something, it's fine.
00:56:02
Speaker
But as soon as you move it, it's destroyed.
00:56:06
Speaker
And, and that, that calculation is really easy to make when you've gotten your fifth or sixth, you know, fake kitchen island.
00:56:15
Speaker
And then you're like, why don't we just get one actually out of wood?
00:56:17
Speaker
Like, oh my God, every time we just keep getting things that fall apart.
00:56:21
Speaker
Which is, from my perspective, that's why you see the price point staying lower.
00:56:28
Speaker
It's not spiking right back up because people don't care that it was made in this town in Massachusetts in this point in time.
00:56:36
Speaker
They care that they have it and they can fix it and it will stick around, which is just a very different draw.
00:56:43
Speaker
And I think that that is something that we're unlikely to see.
00:56:47
Speaker
change back to how it was for a long time.
00:56:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's the, what is precious about an antique has shifted a little bit.
00:57:00
Speaker
For a lot of the market we deal in, what is precious about it to our customers is not the fact that it is an antique.
00:57:08
Speaker
It is in that it is sturdy and it has lasted and will continue to last.
00:57:15
Speaker
And while those two things are quite similar, they're not exactly the same.
Optimism for the Future of Antiques
00:57:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:21
Speaker
Well, that's fascinating.
00:57:22
Speaker
And I love hearing that perspective.
00:57:24
Speaker
And I love hearing about this kind of demand.
00:57:29
Speaker
It makes me feel good about my own future in the antiques world.
00:57:33
Speaker
And I hope listeners feel the same way about it.
00:57:36
Speaker
There really is a lot to look forward to.
00:57:41
Speaker
And on that note, I think I'll let you go.
00:57:45
Speaker
Pippa Piddle and Ben Davidson, thanks so much for joining me.
00:57:49
Speaker
Thank you so much for having us.
00:57:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:57:58
Speaker
That's our show.
00:57:58
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in.
00:58:00
Speaker
All my best for the holidays.
00:58:01
Speaker
And I'll look forward to talking to you again in January when we'll be doing a special episode with the online virtual winter show.
00:58:08
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
00:58:11
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:58:13
Speaker
And I'm your host, Ben Miller.