Maine Antique Digest March 2015

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22-A Maine Antique Digest, March 2015
- FEATURE -
The Young Collector
Community Gardening
by Hollie Davis and Andrew Richmond
Kids’ minds work in
remarkable ways. Some-
times you have a keen
awareness that they are laying
track across vast swaths of new
territory, and they’re constantly
discovering more uncharted
areas. (A terrifying awareness
is that you are allegedly helping
them.) Sometimes the breadth of
what they do not know comes
crashing down on you, and you
realize that perhaps you expect
too much from someone who
does not yet know about gravity,
who is trying to figure out the
sun and 27 million degrees Fahr-
enheit and 93 million miles but
does not yet understand just how
hot the stove is or exactly what
the distance is to Massachusetts,
or who wants you to explain cur-
rency and economics but just 18
months ago would happily put
deodorant on her head. They
are trying to see the connections
between everything but don’t
yet know just how much “every-
thing” there is to connect, and
you work hard to encourage the
health and well-being of all the
connections so that, in theory,
a lined-up understanding of the
world eventually emerges.
Sometimes we don’t always
realize those connections as
adults either—that everything is
connected, that there are ecosys-
tems within ecosystems, that the
antiques business is one of them,
just one of them, and that the
health and well-being of all the
connections in the business are,
or should be, of vital interest to us
all. Small business, we’ve often
observed, can easily become all
about survival. You leap out there
with a business, stress and worry
and agonize about just making
ends meet, and eventually you
can’t necessarily make the best
decisions any longer because
you’ve become so locked in
that survivalist mentality. (It’s
a real thing, and a heavily stud-
ied corollary in nonprofit work
is “founder’s syndrome,” where
the founder of a nonprofit has
all the drive and passion to start
a successful charity but then, for
various reasons and in various
ways, can’t move out of his own
way when it comes to, for exam-
ple, delegating responsibilities or
making more long-term, dispas-
sionate choices.)
The point is, when you’re in
survival mode, you can’t neces-
sarily care very much about how
anyone else is doing. You’re in a
place where you might cut cor-
ners, might even skirt your own
ethics, because when survival’s
on the line, anything can seem
justified. We have to work to get
beyond survival mode.
For the strength of our eco-
system, we need to be “healthy,”
and we need to do what we can
to encourage “health” in others.
If you deal in Wyeths and War-
hols, Cassatts and Coles, it might
not seem as if someone dealing
in mid-level 19th-century litho-
graphs has much to do with you,
or vice versa, but our ecosystem
also comes with a food chain; peo-
ple at the end with lower prices
“feed” those at the end with higher
prices, and those who command
higher prices influence trends and
rates for the entire marketplace.
Someone has to go to all those
estate sales and comb eBay and
mine junk shops, and, yes, some-
one has to deal with expensive
overhead for shows and high-dol-
lar insurance premiums and being
nice to people just because one
might write a big check.
As an auctioneer, Andrew
loves to hear that a dealer had
a good show. He doesn’t find
that a threat to the viability of
the auction business model at
all. To him it means that he has
a potential customer standing
in front of him with money to
spend and space to spare, and, it
is hoped, that person will show
up at an auction. He hopes that
dealers will be pleased, even if
it’s just in a “silver linings” sort
of way, when they encounter
high prices at auction, even if
it means they had to pay more
than they had anticipated or got
shut out entirely. Auctions with
strong prices are an indicator of
a healthy ecosystem; they mean
that there is a public willing to
buy, and, for dealers, they might
even mean that it’s a good time
to see if there’s some old inven-
tory that might move.
Part of the ecosystem is about
encouraging collecting too; we
need that happening at all levels.
We have a couple of friends who
love Victorian decorative arts,
and we love that. We love that
we know 20- and 30-somethings
who are passionate about some-
thing, who are interested in what
is out there, and who, frankly, are
not like other young collectors
who might easily become beaten
down by the lack of availability
and affordability of objects in
other style periods. The kindest
thing you can do for collectors
of any sort is to encourage them.
We often talk about “cultivat-
ing” collectors. That’s an inter-
esting choice of words, because
to cultivate something means to
promote growth or development.
We don’t construct, create, hatch,
make, or even manufacture col-
lectors; we cultivate them—an
act that assumes certain things.
First of all, it assumes that it is not
always going to work, or, at the
very least, the results you get with
some will be less desirable than
the results you get with others.
Cultivating someone also
implies more than a single inter-
action, unless of course you’re
part of a community that makes
cultivating a community goal.
(Ahem!) Cultivating suggests
time, regular or frequent interac-
tions, and a process with intent
and forethought. Cultivating, in
short, means growing something.
Growing things—from gardens
to kids to collectors—is about gen-
tle encouragement, and encour-
agement means, at its very least,
finding something positive to do or
say. Don’t like Victorian furniture?
It’s not what we buy either, so we
try to say, “Wow, it’s a great time to
buy!”Think cut glass is nothing but
a dust collection system? Try, “Oh,
I always think of the beautiful table
my grandmother set when I see
cut glass.” Find regional material
too quirky and divorced from the
styles that inspired it? How about,
“Must be nice to feel so connected
to a place and its objects!” You get
the idea. Find something nice to
say—and dig until you do—then
leave it at that, and go home and
be glad your spouse indulges your
taste in whatever.
Auctioneers, appraisers, and
dealers—anyone who ever
offers a free verbal appraisal—
get plenty of practice at this, and
it’s important to remember that
there is more to an object than
monetary value. You don’t have
to run the numbers to know that
the odds are you’ll see truck-
loads of low-dollar, common
stuff, but it’s also going to be
someone’s grandparents’ wed-
ding silver, even if it is plated,
or a great-aunt’s doll, even if its
face has been repainted, none
of the clothing is original, and
it wasn’t French to begin with.
Keeping standard phrases handy
in one’s mind, along the lines
of “There’s great sentimental
value here, if not monetary, and
that means you shouldn’t worry
about enjoying it!” helps ease
out of these situations. You can
tell someone quite bluntly that
he got ripped off at the flea mar-
ket two years ago, maybe, but if
what you say indirectly implies
that her grandmother was a liar
or his grandfather was really bad
at bartering, that person may
well never forgive you.
In a business where your rep-
utation and your name are just
We don’t
construct,
create, hatch,
make, or even
manufacture
collectors;
we cultivate
them.
about all you really have, you
don’t want people to dislike you,
or at least not to dislike you so
intensely that they’re happy to tell
everyone they know. There’s a lot
of standing around and talking in
show hallways and auction gal-
leries. They won’t recommend
you, they won’t call you if they
find something great, and they
generally won’t go out of their
way to make your life easier.
“Encouragers” and “cultiva-
tors,” on the other hand, benefit
because they will become the
darlings of whatever circles they
move in. It’s no different than
in “real life”: People can spot
falseness and fakery, but genu-
ine interested kindness and posi-
tivity resonates, and if and when
a collector eventually develops
and learns “better” or simply
more, those who were kind will
never be associated with a sting-
ing memory. People want to talk
to, buy from—and sell to—those
who have been encouraging.
Great memories are made and
great stories are told of people
who are unreservedly gener-
ous when it comes to engaging
warmly with others; they might
just get free show tickets or an
advance call about a great item.
It can be so small! One of the
things we love about Facebook
is that it lets us keep in contact
with the community of people
we know and care about, but it’s
also a great place to cultivate and
encourage. It takes only a fraction
of a second to click the “Like”
button to give someone’s new
purchase or rearranged apartment
interior a “like,” and you’re done!
It doesn’t even erode your credi-
bility, if one happens to be so con-
cerned, because to many people,
“liking” something is just analo-
gous to having seen it. Want to be
a real hero? Take just two seconds
to say, “Oh, neat find!” or “Good
for you!” We see this regularly
from a handful of people we
interact with on Facebook, people
who come from all over the coun-
try, who work in museums and
the trade, who are at every stage
of career and financial success.
In short, they represent the entire
food chain, and we can say easily
that it’s also who they are in real
life—people who are kind to you
and pleased for you when you’re
happy, even if you’ve never put
their name on a payee line.
The best part is that we get to
choose what kind of garden we
live in, what we want to cul-
tivate, when, where, and how.
We’re our own little ecosystem,
part of a larger web of connec-
tions that every collector, par-
ticularly every new collector, is,
like a kid, trying to fit together
and figure out. That awareness
and responsibility is enormous,
but it comes with the other joys
of cultivation, which, at least as
far as parenthood is concerned,
are numerous but unpredictable,
unexpected, and, so far, always
seem to come in some form
other than just a paycheck.
We welcome ideas, tips, crit-
icisms, and questions regard-
ing “The Young Collector.”
We may be reached by e-mail
by writing The Young Collector,
c/oMaineAntique Digest, POBox
1429,Waldoboro, ME 04572.
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