Nothing prepared me for the room I was about to enter one afternoon ago. It was an Aladdin’s cave of antiques, oils, old chinaware, tribal faces carved in ivory dark with age. We spoke softly, as if the convex mirror from the Regency period, the gilt bronze ormulu mantel clocks, the 18th century English pastoral scenes in their gilt frames, all bade us to remember our small place in the long history of time.

It was peaceful. In this futuristic life, I wished to own something so very old.

“There’s nothing contemporary here,” said the owner.

In his tone was assurance, that whatever inventions and innovations might come rushing at us sometimes too much too soon, there was this room, and many others like it around the world, where collectors like him quietly collect things from the distant past in a pursuit to slow down the passing of time.