Tonight:
9°c
It's a brave writer who makes optimistic predictions in this climate, but there is a hint that, unlike the stock and housing markets, the antiques market may not be collapsing. In recessions, the old no longer seems boring but tried and tested. Antiques - especially brown furniture - look reassuringly familiar.
When the City was roaring ahead, antiques and such furniture especially fell out of fashion. I live near Camden Passage, and in the boom years worried dealers complained that the visitors who once thronged Islington's antiques quarter had gone astray. Restaurant and bar chains bought out their shops as the young decided they wanted Ikea furniture and older and wealthier customers headed to upmarket modern stores.
The apartments the Candy Brothers designed for the global elite encapsulated fashionable taste. They were filled with metal and glass. A Georgian dresser would have been as out of place as a pensioner at a rave. For all the green politics of the time, few consumers were interested in reducing their carbon footprint by recycling old furniture.
Now when I go to the Criterion auctioneers on Essex Road, I have to push past potential buyers inspecting the lots. This is a place for the London middle class. A fair-sized Victorian mirror fetches around £500. Victorian breakfast tables in good condition go for about £400. Dinner services, chests-of-drawers, old prints and original pictures are much cheaper. For reasons not hard to guess, there are plenty of sellers putting their family heirlooms under the hammer, but equally there are more than enough bidders willing to buy. It's the same at upmarket auctioneers in the centre of town.
This recession is producing the same changes in taste as its predecessors. In hard times, people want the comfort of the familiar, and antiques are the nursery food of interior design. Even those with money like to tone down their conspicuous consumption; an antique looks less flashy and more in tune with the austere mood of the day.
There is, however, a more hard-headed reason for the old returning to popularity. Except for high-end designer pieces, expensive modern furniture is like an expensive car - its value plummets as soon as it leaves the saleroom. With the antique equivalent, however, if your world caves in and you have to auction your possessions, you can always hope to get your money back.
