Antiques Furniture – Tips for Buying Antiques Furniture
Know what you want before setting out to buy antiques furniture. Doesn’t it drive you crazy when you are just thinking about something and the store-owner asks if you know what you want?
I think they need a different starting line. When I first started looking at antiques furniture I did not know what I wanted at all. Least of all did I want to admit that to someone else.
I simply wanted to look around and get ideas. So, I have learned to give them exactly that as an answer. “Thank you for asking, but I am just looking today.” Things got so funny at one consignment shop that the guy said to me that I buy more when I tell him I am just looking than I do when I am looking for something specific. That makes sense. With no goal in mind it is easy to yield to the temptation that your wallet will allow.
When I finished furnishing my apartment with the basics, I began to look for luxury items in the antiques furniture area. I was delighted to find a rocking chair for less than $80 because it had some surface damage, but it was easy to tell it was a handcrafted piece. That guy said he would lose money if I kept shopping like that.
So it is not only a question of knowing what you want, as much as it is knowing what to look for so you can tell if it is a real article of antiques furniture or a vintage piece or a fraud. If everything is totally uniform and symmetrical and perfect looking, there is a good chance that it was machine made.
If you can see imperfections in the wood or wear and tear on the spindles or rockers you can get an idea that it has been hand made and used a lot. It will take you a while to learn how to recognize real from fake antiques furniture but you can have fun along the way. Get to know a dealer you can trust and ask some questions about the history of that piece of furniture.
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