I found it curious that the article concludes with a "social justice" angle. Noting that antiques are more eco-friendly than manufacturing completely new items, and wondering why this environmental point doesn't attract young people.
For one thing, the article talks about antique furniture costing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Selling that to a crowd of debt-saddled Millennials on the basis of "social justice" is pretentious to the extreme. After all, my organic latte is already resting atop my bamboo yoga mat... so I've done my part.
More seriously though, I've always assumed that the antiques market is driven by nostalgia and longing for the past. The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past. Specifically FOR "social justice" reasons.
Please don't get me wrong, I'm not making some absurd Tumblr argument that antique chairs are racist or anything. I'm just noting that less nostalgia for the past probably lowers the demand for antiques, and surely that plays a role alongside the supply rising due to Baby Boomer retirements.
> The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past.
I heard the same thing about my peers. And now we have Star Wars & NES games everywhere. I'd venture to say the younger generation's nostalgia is more for digital experiences & media than physical objects.
What about the rise of thrifting? Going into thrift stores/flea markets looking for high value, heritage menswear pieces for a fraction of their selling price isn't only budget friendly and guaranteed to have you looking good (if you're not an idiot and can find a fit that a tailor can polish off), but people do it because they don't want to buy into fast fashion and the planned obsolescence cycle of a lot of new clothes.
An easy parallel can be seen here with clothes and furniture. While younger people won't be dropping 6 mil on the desk from the article, they might consider buying an antique, well-made, durable night table instead of its flimsy ikea counterpart if they know it'll last and won't morph into wobbly garbage in a year. Doubly true for Chinese knock offs and walmart brand items.
Actually most antiques are now very cheap, cheaper than new good quality furniture. But not cheaper than disposable IKEA furniture. The high end that the article talks about is not typical. Even mid century modern that it says quadrupled in price is mostly still cheaper than decent quality new furniture.
For myself nostalgia doesn't have anything to do with it. I like well built furniture that will last the test of time and remain nice looking. Ikea and the ilk produce throw-away furniture. Even their sturdiest/most expensive pieces are designed to be used for a time, then discarded. I'd rather buy 1 $4000 couch that lasts my entire adult life than buying a new $500 Ikea couch every 5 years.
> More seriously though, I've always assumed that the antiques market is driven by nostalgia and longing for the past. The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past.
As a 31-year-old Millennial, I can tell you that nostalgia and longing for the past is very much alive and well among my peers.
It's just that all our nostalgia is concentrated on the '80s and '90s (probably more the first half of the '90s than anything else, but there's still some '80s and late '90s nostalgia mixed in there), and antique furniture is probably the very last thing you think of when you think of those decades.
You are very likely onto something, but most antiques, the mid-range mentioned in the article, typically aren't that expensive.
I've been on a quest to replace my bookshelves with stackable, glass fronted cases. Antiques are both cheaper and higher quality than modern, new furniture. (I also have too many desks at this point, but that's mostly a personal problem.)
>Antique furniture went mainstream in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, as the bourgeoisie found themselves with more disposable income and developed a desire to invest in their homes. The antique trade boomed in Paris and London. By 1890 Paris had 300 antique shops, up from 25 around 1850, says Manuel Charpy, a historian. But antiques, like clothes, go in and out of style. They boomed again in the 1950s and 1980s, when “period rooms” in a single nostalgic style were all the rage.
The upwardly mobile / striver class of middle class people with money to burn and a need to signal their social position is both smaller and made up differently than it was before. Instead of the traditional professional classes, we are in the age of the technician and skilled tradesman.
High-tech folk are dominated by engineers, a substantial portion of who hail from Asia. Their collecting tastes trend toward tech toys and away from European traditions. Skilled tradespeople are like a branch of applied engineers. Plumbers, electricians, gear heads and HVAC people tend to buy old cars, not 18th century furniture or silver service.
Also, people are less social than ever before, so status symbols shift. When you look at 3000 ft^2 homes, you see lots of fancy exterior stuff, and empty interiors. There's no stigma to owning a million dollar home and sitting on beanbags today.
Worlds colliding. This Economist article plus our antique and vintage focused startup, ATTIC (https://attic-dc.com), is featured on Cloudinary's blog today:
The E article points out the waning demand for certain genres and increasing demand for others. This can't be emphasized enough. Midcentury modern is what younger furniture shoppers seem to appreciate and it's reflected in the designs of the big box retailers like West Elm CB2. Their assessment of younger shoppers seems a bit off too, as outlets like the Washington Post and Apartment Therapy cite mixing old and new as one of the top 5 (!) design trends:
We also think that consumers have moved away from these goods partly out of convenience (or lack thereof). Furniture is something you want touch (and smell) before you buy. You want to inspect its integrity. It's a market that doesn't lend itself to buying online, at a distance. At the same time, it's not particularly easy to shop locally either -- furniture dealers are not necessarily the most tech savvy and don't always have the resources for comprehensive marketing.
That's one of the reasons we built ATTIC -- to help aggregate and showcase local opportunities to buy antiques and vintage furniture from small businesses. In general, shopping local -- especially from small businesses -- is a difficult proposition when it's so easy to shop online. That's a problem that we think could use some solving.
I believe you're right -- while mid-century modern is not technically antique because it's not quite 100 years old, I believe it is currently occupying that niche in furniture fashion.
However, there's one major difference in this market -- many of the classic midcentury modern designs are still being made. You can buy a brand new, fully authentic Series 7 or Eames Lounge Chair or many of the other things on my wife's shopping list.
And even new designs in the mid-century modern style do not have the same feel of inauthenticity that fake antiques do. Mid-century modern has always been mass-produced in a factory.
Our home is filled with antiques. Not expensive ones... cheap, practical ones. We scour the stores for old farm tools that are in good enough shape to still use. Much of our furniture was inherited, not bought, and we can trace it back to great-grandparents.
We didn't plan it this way. We just happen to live on a hobby farm, trying to live sustainably, and would rather keep our old furniture for both financial and family reasons.
Of course, this also proves the point of the article - even in a home furnished mostly with antiques, we aren't part of a market for it. Our antiques are functional objects in our life, not investments.
Might there be a shift in how we think about furniture? You used to run into people who'd have stuff that was passed down the generations, and not just in wealthy homes. It seems to have been a necessity for poor young couples, and a lot of old stuff seems to have been hand crafted.
Nowadays, you can change every piece of furniture in the house for a few hundred bucks. There's constantly something new at IKEA, and you don't want to care if the kid scratches your dining table. You also want it to be easy to clean, and if you're moving house you can just throw out the old stuff.
There's a change in how people think about furniture, driven by high real estate prices. A grand piano costs more in floor area in major cities than it actually does to buy.
It's also clearly very fashion-driven. Wait until everyone's gone IKEA modernist, and you'll see the pendulum start to swing back again.
> if you're moving house you can just throw out the old stuff.
At my college (UT Dallas), we had on-campus apartments. Not dorms, but an actual apartment complex on campus.
The best place for new residents to acquire furniture was by the dumpsters. It turns out that most people moving out would just chuck half their furniture and leave it by the dumpster. Every year from May to August, there would be copious amounts of furniture at the dumpsters. If you were a new resident, you were quickly told that the best way to acquire a couch was to head over to the nearest dumpster and take what you see.
I attended UTD from 2003 to 2007; I don't know if things have changed since.
"Television programmes such as “Antiques Roadshow”, where octogenarians find out how much the contents of their attics are worth, reinforce the perception that antiques are for oldies."
to the contrary. i'm 40 - octogenarian around here - and the show has done nothing but increase my interest in old "things".
The article implies jewellery is doing well (or at least better) in the second paragraph, and I'd suspect that high end watches would follow that a bit more than furniture. Things you can show off more easily still selling well?
Last few places I've lived I decorated my place by getting furniture from charity shops (what I think Americans call Thrift stores) and then stripping and repainting them all to match.
The really good pieces could be disassembled and reassembled (with basic tools) and when done looked like new.
Since the resurgence of the "distressed" look it's getting harder and harder to find good stuff since the market has exploded.
I think when I have the time I'll just borrow my friends workshop and build all my furniture for the current place since I'm mostly running with IKEA style stuff at the moment.
If you figure out when leases are up in your area, you can pick up a lot of nice antique furniture for free. Often, people will be so happy to see you take it, so they don't have to pay to get it disposed of.
[+] [-] StevePerkins|10 years ago|reply
For one thing, the article talks about antique furniture costing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Selling that to a crowd of debt-saddled Millennials on the basis of "social justice" is pretentious to the extreme. After all, my organic latte is already resting atop my bamboo yoga mat... so I've done my part.
More seriously though, I've always assumed that the antiques market is driven by nostalgia and longing for the past. The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past. Specifically FOR "social justice" reasons.
Please don't get me wrong, I'm not making some absurd Tumblr argument that antique chairs are racist or anything. I'm just noting that less nostalgia for the past probably lowers the demand for antiques, and surely that plays a role alongside the supply rising due to Baby Boomer retirements.
[+] [-] csixty4|10 years ago|reply
I heard the same thing about my peers. And now we have Star Wars & NES games everywhere. I'd venture to say the younger generation's nostalgia is more for digital experiences & media than physical objects.
[+] [-] giltleaf|10 years ago|reply
An easy parallel can be seen here with clothes and furniture. While younger people won't be dropping 6 mil on the desk from the article, they might consider buying an antique, well-made, durable night table instead of its flimsy ikea counterpart if they know it'll last and won't morph into wobbly garbage in a year. Doubly true for Chinese knock offs and walmart brand items.
[+] [-] mason55|10 years ago|reply
I would imagine that they just don't have a past to long for because they are young.
[+] [-] justincormack|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a2tech|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amyjess|10 years ago|reply
As a 31-year-old Millennial, I can tell you that nostalgia and longing for the past is very much alive and well among my peers.
It's just that all our nostalgia is concentrated on the '80s and '90s (probably more the first half of the '90s than anything else, but there's still some '80s and late '90s nostalgia mixed in there), and antique furniture is probably the very last thing you think of when you think of those decades.
[+] [-] mcguire|10 years ago|reply
I've been on a quest to replace my bookshelves with stackable, glass fronted cases. Antiques are both cheaper and higher quality than modern, new furniture. (I also have too many desks at this point, but that's mostly a personal problem.)
[+] [-] Spooky23|10 years ago|reply
>Antique furniture went mainstream in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, as the bourgeoisie found themselves with more disposable income and developed a desire to invest in their homes. The antique trade boomed in Paris and London. By 1890 Paris had 300 antique shops, up from 25 around 1850, says Manuel Charpy, a historian. But antiques, like clothes, go in and out of style. They boomed again in the 1950s and 1980s, when “period rooms” in a single nostalgic style were all the rage.
The upwardly mobile / striver class of middle class people with money to burn and a need to signal their social position is both smaller and made up differently than it was before. Instead of the traditional professional classes, we are in the age of the technician and skilled tradesman.
High-tech folk are dominated by engineers, a substantial portion of who hail from Asia. Their collecting tastes trend toward tech toys and away from European traditions. Skilled tradespeople are like a branch of applied engineers. Plumbers, electricians, gear heads and HVAC people tend to buy old cars, not 18th century furniture or silver service.
Also, people are less social than ever before, so status symbols shift. When you look at 3000 ft^2 homes, you see lots of fancy exterior stuff, and empty interiors. There's no stigma to owning a million dollar home and sitting on beanbags today.
[+] [-] pjc50|10 years ago|reply
In central London, a million dollar home is a one-bedroom flat: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/new-homes-for-sale/property-37648... (540ft^2)
I don't think there's room for things much larger than a beanbag there.
[+] [-] technotarek|10 years ago|reply
http://cloudinary.com/blog/10_startups_managing_images_in_th...
The E article points out the waning demand for certain genres and increasing demand for others. This can't be emphasized enough. Midcentury modern is what younger furniture shoppers seem to appreciate and it's reflected in the designs of the big box retailers like West Elm CB2. Their assessment of younger shoppers seems a bit off too, as outlets like the Washington Post and Apartment Therapy cite mixing old and new as one of the top 5 (!) design trends:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/apartment-ther...
We also think that consumers have moved away from these goods partly out of convenience (or lack thereof). Furniture is something you want touch (and smell) before you buy. You want to inspect its integrity. It's a market that doesn't lend itself to buying online, at a distance. At the same time, it's not particularly easy to shop locally either -- furniture dealers are not necessarily the most tech savvy and don't always have the resources for comprehensive marketing.
That's one of the reasons we built ATTIC -- to help aggregate and showcase local opportunities to buy antiques and vintage furniture from small businesses. In general, shopping local -- especially from small businesses -- is a difficult proposition when it's so easy to shop online. That's a problem that we think could use some solving.
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|10 years ago|reply
However, there's one major difference in this market -- many of the classic midcentury modern designs are still being made. You can buy a brand new, fully authentic Series 7 or Eames Lounge Chair or many of the other things on my wife's shopping list.
And even new designs in the mid-century modern style do not have the same feel of inauthenticity that fake antiques do. Mid-century modern has always been mass-produced in a factory.
[+] [-] codingdave|10 years ago|reply
We didn't plan it this way. We just happen to live on a hobby farm, trying to live sustainably, and would rather keep our old furniture for both financial and family reasons.
Of course, this also proves the point of the article - even in a home furnished mostly with antiques, we aren't part of a market for it. Our antiques are functional objects in our life, not investments.
[+] [-] melling|10 years ago|reply
https://web.archive.org/web/19980430125559/http://www.archon...
20 years later and I'm more or less doing the same thing for the Swift Language:
http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html
Perhaps I should have taken the time to learn some design skills.
[+] [-] reustle|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lordnacho|10 years ago|reply
Nowadays, you can change every piece of furniture in the house for a few hundred bucks. There's constantly something new at IKEA, and you don't want to care if the kid scratches your dining table. You also want it to be easy to clean, and if you're moving house you can just throw out the old stuff.
[+] [-] pjc50|10 years ago|reply
It's also clearly very fashion-driven. Wait until everyone's gone IKEA modernist, and you'll see the pendulum start to swing back again.
[+] [-] amyjess|10 years ago|reply
At my college (UT Dallas), we had on-campus apartments. Not dorms, but an actual apartment complex on campus.
The best place for new residents to acquire furniture was by the dumpsters. It turns out that most people moving out would just chuck half their furniture and leave it by the dumpster. Every year from May to August, there would be copious amounts of furniture at the dumpsters. If you were a new resident, you were quickly told that the best way to acquire a couch was to head over to the nearest dumpster and take what you see.
I attended UTD from 2003 to 2007; I don't know if things have changed since.
[+] [-] lintiness|10 years ago|reply
"Television programmes such as “Antiques Roadshow”, where octogenarians find out how much the contents of their attics are worth, reinforce the perception that antiques are for oldies."
to the contrary. i'm 40 - octogenarian around here - and the show has done nothing but increase my interest in old "things".
[+] [-] lazyant|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeleung|10 years ago|reply
Recent record breaking sale of an omega speedmaster:
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/omega-speedmaster-referenc...
And it wasn't even one that's been on the moon like this one:
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/moon-watch-sells-for-$1mil...
[+] [-] fredoralive|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noir_lord|10 years ago|reply
The really good pieces could be disassembled and reassembled (with basic tools) and when done looked like new.
Since the resurgence of the "distressed" look it's getting harder and harder to find good stuff since the market has exploded.
I think when I have the time I'll just borrow my friends workshop and build all my furniture for the current place since I'm mostly running with IKEA style stuff at the moment.
[+] [-] douche|10 years ago|reply