By Deb Clark
Part two of my draft book, Secondhand Love.
You can read part one here
I LOVE vintage.
I want you to love vintage and preloved as much as I do.
I don’t want to make you feel guilty if you’ve bought IKEA or Kmart furniture, I have myself. But I do want to perhaps open your eyes to what much of that cheap, fast furniture is made from and it’s effect on the planet. I want you to be able to make Informed choices, and gain some confidence in decorating with vintage and antiques.
Furnishing your home with vintage and antiques doesn’t have to be expensive, although it can be if you want it to! If you’re like me and just want practical pieces that will look good, last, and will bring you joy, at prices similar to that of the big home decor chainstores, vintage is the way to go. My own vintage shop is proof of that! Plus, when you buy from a vintage or antique store, you’re supporting a small, locally owned business and ensuring your furnishings don’t come from a sweat shop. You can also collect your piece on the day you pay for it rather than waiting for weeks to get it shipped from the tires warehouse or from China. Unless your having it custom painted of course. Doesn’t that feel better than ordering something from a large faceless corporation?
So let’s get started. Here’s why I love vintage so much and why you should too-
Vintage is chic
Every room can benefit with a vintage or antique statement piece, something that will never go out of style and gives the room a focal point – an antique sideboard for the TV in the living room, an amazing Timber bed in the bedroom, or a vintage desk in the study. Just like my ‘antique’ dining table – could change the chairs over the years to suit changes in trends, and depending on if I had little kids or grown ones, but the table could stay the same. I still regret parting with it.
If you don’t mind a little wear-and-tear, or if you prefer a little rustic charm, old and vintage furniture is perfect to furnish your home or to give your home a new look.
For those who prefer a more modern, streamlined look, midcentury pieces from the 1950s and 60s may be right. Or perhaps vintage industrial is more your thing. You can also update old timber pieces with paint. Shabby chic is great, but you can also paint in solid colours for a more modern look. You can mix all of these and throw in some modern pieces, and you’ll be creating a unique home that is also better for the environment than most modern interiors.
Mid century modern TV chair
Vintage is unique
Vintage furniture allows you to create a unique, one of a kind home that expresses your personality, instead of it looking like everyone else’s. Do you really want a home that looks like a display home or a page out of a Kmart catalogue? Your home should be as original as you are. Find things you love, and fill your home with them. Yes a flat-pack white laminate bookshelf is cheap and easy (if you like putting that stuff together) and looks ok filled with books, but what about a solid pine bookshelf you’ve hand painted yourself in a color you love, or an antique timber shelf that one graced a doctors office.
Vintage can mean finding secondhand bargains or antique treasures, taking time to find pieces you love that will weave together a story of your life.
Vintage is Nostalgic
I mentioned earlier my first home and the old TV chairs my grandparents gave me. I still have a pair of those chairs, and every time I sit on them I think of my grandparents.
That’s one of the things that got me into vintage in the first place – nostalgia and family connections. Vintage is a way of keeping memories alive. I like to think of what stories an antique or vintage piece could tell. I love the fact that an item has lived a life with people before me, and will live another life after me.
Many of my customers get excited when they see something in the shop that reminds them of the grandparents, or of their childhood. Rotary telephones are a classic, and most people have no trouble remembering their childhood telephone numbers – and love to stand there and dial each digit.
Fun with a vintage phone
I hear “oh my grandma had that” or “I remember mum had one of those” at least ten times a day! I’ve even had one elderly lady in the shop in tears, happy ones she told me, because of the emotions she felt looking at ‘her history.’ Throughout this book I’ll share a few case studies of some of my customers who love vintage, and love collecting. It’s interesting to see how they “got the bug” when it comes to vintage.
Vintage is Durable
Vintage Furniture lasts. It has lasted. It’s usually made of durable materials like timber, chrome, brass and marble. That’s why it’s still around.
I love timber furniture, and buy buying vintage timber furniture I don’t have to feel bad about chopping down trees. Have you ever noticed how heavy vintage furniture can be? It’s because its not hiding cheap particle board or plastic beneath laminate or fake timber finishes. Most of my vintage timber furniture at present is from the 1930’s and 40s. That means it was made from trees cut down nearly 100 years ago. You just can’t get timber like that any more – slow growth large old forest timber. Most of it was harvested sustainably and in the case of antique furniture, by hand. It was carefully milled and dried, and designed to withstand changes in temperature and moisture.
An antique pine chest of drawers that will last another 50 years
Most flat packed furniture, and a lot of modern furniture, is made of engineered, or man made timber, covered with laminate or a timber veneer, the veneer is a thin slice of actual timber, and laminate is either Plain white or black, or sometimes a timber look plastic covering. Some modern Veneered furniture looks good and solid, until you look carefully. Veneers have been around for hundreds of years, but antique and vintage furniture has veneers put over other solid timber, or sometimes plywood, while modern furniture has the veneer over less solid man made timbers.
Most of today’s furniture timber is from fast growth timber plantations. These trees grow fast but to only a certain size. That is why chipboard and MDF are so popular, as the small trees can be pulped to make a ‘fake’ man made timber product. I’ll look more at made made timbers like particle board and chipboard in the next chapter, and why they are not the best choice for furniture.
Vintage equals Value
Solid timber furniture can be sanded back and refinished when scratched, or a table leg is chewed by the puppy. Wonky chair legs can be rescrewed or glued and clamped. If we get sick of the yellow pine or dark Indonesian stain we can paint it. Then we can paint it again. Flat packed chip board furniture is designed to last two to five years. As Max Elbourne said about laminate furniture on the ABCs ‘War on waste” program, “It’s designed to fall apart as soon as you walk out of the shop’
My parents are the only people I know who have vintage IKEA furniture. They bought a pine dining suite in Sweden in 1977 and brought it back to Australia with them a year later. The round table has now been cut down to a square, and the pine has been painted. My father, who taught me all about French polishing when I was younger, actually rang me for advice about chalk paint for that project. But it was a solid timber table and has lasted.
I think most people buying IKEA furniture, or other flat-pack furniture, aren’t intending for it to last. I know we’ve had a few IKEA pieces, bought new in Melbourne, because they were cheap, and being flat packed you could take them home in a VW beetle. Did we keep them when we moved five years later. No. They were made of chipboard with a thin laminate veneer and did not last a move of rooms let alone a moving of house. Sadly though, Over 900 million people visit an IKEA store every year, and a lot of IKEA furniture ends up in landfill.
You can buy a chest of drawers in idea for $65. It will last for 2 to 5 years. An antique timber chest of drawers may cost $300, it’s already lasted 100 years, and it will last you at least the next 20 years. Or you could sell it for at least half what you paid for it. The IKEA drawers cost you, conservatively, $13 a year, and you will be lucky to get $10 if you sell them after that time, but it will most likely head to landfill. It can’t be recycled or burnt. The antique drawers will cost you about the same per year, and you will end up with a saleable item after twenty years, or at worst have timber that can be made into something else or used as firewood.
To be honest it’s a no brainer.
give me my ‘grandma furniture’ any day. Our walnut dining table is more than 200 years old. It is thereby recycled. It’s hand-hewn and funky, and no one else in London has one just like it. I have owned that table for nearly 20 years, and you’d think that I’d have tired of it by now. But something happens when you hold on to things: rather than weary of them, you grow more attached.”
Vintage used Healthy materials
Vintage and antique furniture, made of real solid materials like hand cut timber, with traditional methods of dowel joins, hand forged nails, woven fabrics and natural stuffings of fabric fibre or horse hair, that don’t leach harmful chemicals into the air. And when it comes time to refinishing or upcycling there are lots of safe, VOC free products to choose from.
Vintage was Better made
Not only was furniture of the past made of better materials, it was better designed and just better made than much of the fast Furniture produced today.
Antiques were generally made with skill by highly trained craftsmen, and were designed to last and be handed from generation to generation. Newer vintage furniture was still built in small, often family owned workshops. The furniture was often built for the local market, using locally harvested timber, and designed and finished in. A way that suited the local environment. For instance, here in North Queensland I get vintage timber tables, often made from local silky oak or Mackay cedar, that are built will spacers underneath that allow the timber to swell slightly during the humid summer.
Vintage appreciates in value
Antique and vintage items do not lose their value the same way modern items do.
Once you take home your average new piece of furniture out of the store, just like a new car, it suddenly falls into the category of “second-hand” and loses tremendous value, usually half.
Antique and vintage items however have a value that is retained due to their materials, craftsmanship and their limited numbers.
That being said, market tastes do fluctuate and you shouldn’t expect to make a huge profit on selling your pieces. The trick to retaining or gaining value on your antiques is knowing the appetites of the markets and when the time is to sell, buy or just enjoy. For example, currently. wardrobes are very hard to sell, but I think once people realise how much timber is in a wardrobe, and how easy they are to convert to pantries or shelves, the price will go up again.
Vintage is Green
Vintage pieces are the most environmentally responsible choice for home decorating because they’re 100% post-consumer content. Well look more closely at how and why in the next chapter.
Plus, when you buy an antique or vintage item from a small store, you’re supporting a locally owned business and ensuring your furnishings don’t come from a sweat shop. How socially responsible!
In a nutshell
Vintage is chic, unique, nostalgic, durable, equals value, used better materials, was better made, appreciates in value and is green. That’s why we love it!
More next week,
Deb💋
