antiques
Island Life - June/July 2010
Antiques and Collectables
Virtual Antiques
Philip Hoare - F.T.V.I
I believe we live in a fragmented culture
of consumerism; we seem to have
entered a new urban “Hyperspace”
of invisible cities, post-modern
urbanism, electronic webs, virtual
communities, nowhere geographies and
computer-generated artificial worlds.
It’s no surprise then that society’s desire
for ‘quick-fix’ disposability has also
altered the way we consume art. Video,
music, TV and literature are instantly
obtainable in disaggregated form. We
meditate on play list rather than album
and enjoy fragments of thirty-second
eclectic television clips on ‘You Tube’.
It’s no different in the world of
antiques. When I began my career,
more than forty years ago, the way
antiques were bought and sold was
hugely different to today.
We would visit places of interest, look
over collections, note down descriptions
and thoroughly examine pieces; it was a
very ‘hands on’ approach.
There is a great pleasure and joy in
handling antiques; these are items
passed through generations, admired
and touched by countless people. Each
piece contains energy peculiar to itself,
as a result of the variation of its cultural
source.
Today, through the emergence of
technology, emails are snapped back
and forth with photographs attached.
There is no way a human being can
sense, or gauge the absolute quality
of a piece from a photograph, it is
impossible - there is so much more to
an antique than its aesthetics. Having
encountered an e-mailed photograph,
many people now bid on the telephone
at auction; one could even make a
purchase on the golf course using their
blackberry!
The world has certainly been
celebrity valuers. Essentially, we are
living in two worlds, the real world and
subsumed onto one schizophrenic
the virtual. Without physical human
plane of instant access, no-time,
interaction though, the essence of the
no-geography space.
art world will be lost, after all, human
An African bronze figure was bought,
beings created these wonderful pieces,
from a photograph, on the Internet for
they should be enjoyed and cherished in
£70.00 as a decorative item. The buyer
as tactile a way as possible!
had the bronze professionally valued
and it was appraised and authenticated
as a very rare Benin bronze, which had
been bought back after the Punitive
Exhibition of 1897 when Benin was
sacked. The piece had been wrapped
in brown paper and kept in a cupboard
under the stairs for many years. Had
the owners called in a professional
valuer like myself, rather than upload
an image, I would have recognized it
immediately and this mistake would not
have been made.
Television programs about antiques
have helped to create awareness in
the public domain about value, and
celebrity culture has even created a few
Philip Hoare is a Fellow of the Trade Valuers Institute - Mob: 07773 877 242
Email: [email protected] - Tel: (01983) 523331.
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