When I was young I used to play an unusual game at my grandparent’s house. They lived in a stately, old, brick Victorian built in 1912 that was stuffed full of antiques. I used to go into a room at random and imagine myself going back in time. My first stop was the year 1950. Now I would ask myself what items made after 1950 would disappear from the room and what items made before 1950 would remain? Now, still standing in the same room, I would imagine that I had gone back even further in time to 1900. What would be left in the room and what would disappear? I would repeat this process until I had mentally time traveled back to the early 19th century.
This odd little game actually gives surprisingly deep insights into the natural process of physical attrition and how it relates to the antique industry. Even in my grandparent’s house, which was packed full of antiques of all types and descriptions, the Civil War era (circa 1865) was a watershed. My grandparents owned many, many post 1860s antiques. But, if you were to go back in time before 1865, the number of surviving items in a given room dwindled to just a handful. For example, there may only be a single piece of furniture, a simple stoneware jug and perhaps a pressed glass bowl – all of them pre Civil War era. Everything else in the room would be post 1865.
These childhood observations have wider implications for the world of antiques. While items from before the 1860s are truly scarce, even surviving late-Victorian, post-1860s antiques aren’t particularly common. Time has done its wicked work all too well, scouring the world until only a fragment of our material heritage remains. This process – the natural attrition of poorly made or low quality objects over time – is known as seasoning. It strips away the faddish and the banal, leaving only the exceptional and enduring. And as we move forward in the 21st century, it is increasingly apparent that early and mid 20th century items are also gradually but inexorably being winnowed by this never ending phenomenon.
All of these experiences lead to some important conclusions for antique investors and collectors alike. Seasoning only happens slowly, over decades and decades of time. A substantial amount occurs over the first 50 years of an object’s existence. This amount of time more or less coincides with the definition of antique, meaning anything considered antique has already been seasoned to some extent. After the first half century, seasoning progresses more slowly until the process is largely complete around 150 or 200 years. So today, when we examine mid 19th century or earlier antiques, only the best of the best has survived. Medieval and ancient items, having been seasoned for either hundreds or thousands of years, are rarer yet. Shockingly few items survive from those periods – almost all of them remarkably durable.
One reason that antiques are often superior investments is precisely because they have been seasoned over almost unimaginable lengths of time. Inferior items produced from subpar materials like cardboard, cheap base metals and low-quality woods or fabrics have tended to disappear over time. These “bad” antiques – those that are cheaply-made, nondescript or stylistically average – have a smaller and smaller chance of avoiding the garbage heap as the decades wear on. Families throw them out when they move or when older family members die. Or they are destroyed in tragic natural disasters such as fires, floods and tornadoes. Or they simply rust, mold or turn to dust from age and exposure.
So have confidence when you begin collecting fine antiques with an eye toward investments returns. Whether perusing 18th century French bronze candelabra or ancient Minoan sealstones, only the finest specimens have survived the destructive effects of centuries of time. The world will never have more antiques, only less from now until eternity. This means that when you do buy a fine, century old antique, chances are very good that it will continue to reliably appreciate far into the future.
