The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1891-05-09
A WANING FAD.
An Old Furniture Man Who Finds His
Business Play ed Out.

$500
lecting in his travels ancient pieces of
furniture. He owns his occupation is
about done. He didn't fancy the loss OF
his revenue. and being a sensible kind
Of a fellow made it his business to find
out the root of the cause of the shrunken
revenue. He thinks he was successful
and got hold of the root, out it was IN
available to cause any growth of his
business plant, however well .nutured.
He talks about it in this way Begin
ming about ten years back the craze for
following up auctions and buying old
furniture set in in the country. IN the
cities it dated away back of that. The
FIRST symptom of the disease was old
clocks, and l find, looking back over
my books, I've sold twenty-five in the
last ten years. Some of them were fair
looking and some were not. You see
the way it generally is, an old family
about three generations back, that had
the wit to make enough money to buy
handsome, costly Ones, transfuses the
same capacity to it's descendants, and
they are well able to keep any old relic
they have, money being no temptation
to them to sell. It's generally the an
cestorless people who go nosing around
after other peoples old things. Well,
after clocks chairs set In, and they
had it hard; all broke ont with
chairs; couldn't sleep nights; fiddle back
chairs mostly. I've sold them as high
as $40 many a time. acted as middle
man at one time. / used to buy them
in the br~oken-down stage and sell them
to- 4 woman in the city. She slicked
them up and sold them for $40; said they
came right from deal old grandma's
dome. Then old writing-desks caught
on. When you come to look at it, there's
more sense in buying an old desk than
in any other old piece, for modern
builders have made not SO much inn
provement up to date in these goods.
You see, in old times there were no
safes used in houses TO give secure
keeping to the law and family docu-
ments, 80 it wa necessary to have some
receptacle for them. An old desk of
curled maple and slanting front, its
lots of little pigeonholes, sly locks and
drawer-room is really a valuable piece
of furniture.
About the time desks took hold,
pu1lCbS koJ III BCdl. i hCNCI sdW Dut
one / could care for. Cape Cod is a
splendid place to pick up fine antique
furniture. saw this buffet there,
genuine cherry, no veneering, wine
color with age, and carved to fit the
queens taste. 1t was eight feet broad,
clawlegged, swell front, and, / believe,
brought from Italy by some old salt
who sailed from the Cape. ] bought it
and left it there until summer visitors
came. A man from New York saw it.
He vas a gentleman, that fellow was.
He said he'd been American minister at
Paris, and he scarcely ever saw a better
n in any of the old palaces there. He
gave me SIS for it, and had it done over
in New York. Then il was shipped to
his place where he lived m at
Mount Vernon, and he said when | saw
him again that it became famous.
That mans home was filed with heir
looms in silver, wood, fabrics, and pict-
ures, but one night, when the family
was in New York, it caught fire and the
whole valuable collection, which could
never be replaced, was burned. And
the most aggravating thing about it
was that the insurance on the contents
Of the house expired that very day.
Complete loss. If hat wasn't impious,
| dunno.
Owners of houses out in the country
and the livers in provincial cities ere
now the only people who can be roped
in for old furniture and other an
tiquities. The styles gave out among
the stylish. You may have read Of the
sale in New York City a short time ago
Of Millionaire Allen Thorndyke Rice's
valuables-everything he left-goods
enough to furnish ten hotels, the press
reporters say. Well, you can guess how
much the crowd of very fashionable
people care about old furniture, for
they were sold for merely nothing. A
large sideboard OF solid mahogany,
made in Paris, sold for S55. Another
piece of furniture which would have
been jumped at in a one-horse city was
a Sheraton desk, very old. perfectly
preserved, the woodwork and carving
being the most expensive, sold for SEQ
after lots of urging by the auctioneer.
Ordinary mahogany desks, like those
people will pay $50 or $40 for before
they are lone over, sold for IS and SO.
Some solid mahogany chairs, very an
tique, made in Paris by n of the
swell decorators of long ago, sold at S14
each, though it was not denied that they
cost $50 each at the lowest estimate.
Brass and iron of all the old and ex-
pensive shapes sold at from S. to SIS a
set. People who are up with the time
have got done with such old stuff; they
don't want TO give it house room. But
when it came to old feathers, damasks,
brocades, or old e~ngravings and prints,
such as Fortuny's, Simone's and Rosse's
works, those New York swells grabbed
them up in a moment at u good price.
They are now what makes a house the
thing, because now the modern furni-
ture, which is copied from the elegant
antique styles, is made so suberb
wealthy people and cultivated people
buy it, and if they have been guilty of
buying somebody else's old trash that
was awkward in style and never fine in
makeup, they put it out of sight and
put in its place the modern manufact-
ures.
That's what has spoiled my money
making as n collector of old furniture.
OF course there are some families who
have been for three or four generations
people of wealth, and they may have
some really valuable old things, and
they utilize them and like them for the
associations connected with them. I've
thought sometimes If its true, as l I'M
derstand the Swedenborgian faith, that
the dead come again to earth in immor-
tai form and people the old scenes and
places, that they'dhave quite a time 60
ing round looking up he old chairs,
desks, sideboards, etc, and if they use
them where they find them the new
owners must have a big ghostly crowd
around most of the time. No, SIR
added the philosophical e~x-dealer in old
furniture, ''old furniture which has be-