My Quotes About Antiques

If John Bartlett ever produced a book of quotes having to do with antiques, here are a few Antique Talk offerings.

• The best book to learn antiques from is the checkbook.
• Develop your "eye." A pro doesn't rush to examine an antique up close. They step back for perspective.
• Think of antiques the same way you think of an old comfortable pair of jeans.
• Question that which looks old but not antique.  Regard that which looks antique but not old.
• In the antique business there are no experts, just students.
• I asked my New Hampshire skiing buddy why he waited until he was 60 to get married.  "Well, Wayne, I always figured it's better to want something I didn't have than to have something I didn't want.  That same Yankee prudence should be applied to antique collecting.
• A painter peeked into a shed and saw a man hammering out a large iron form into the shape of a dove.  "I envy you weathervane maker," the artist said.  "All the sky is your canvas."
• An antique is anything old with class.
• Physical law is often the force behind societal change.  "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." This pendulamic dynamism of nature is the driving force of human nature as well.  As such our taste has swung radically from Queen Anne to Chippendale, from Victorian to Art Nouveau, from sandals to wingtips, from Carter to Regan and from disco to country, seemingly overnight.
• A young black boy asked the wise old antique dealer, "Why sir, did god make people in so many different colors?"  "That is easy" Thinkwhile replied, "For the same reason he make all the different kinds of trees.  To make the world a more interesting place!"
• Old teddy bears cannot be bought, only adopted.
• Look for art that opens new boundaries:  Thomas Chippendale, Manet, Frank Lloyd Wright, Steuben, James Joyce, Mary Cassat, Walt Disney, Edison, Lennon & McCartney-all were innovators.  By opening doors to tomorrow they secured a place in yesterday.
• People who do the exact opposite of what seems correct often meet with success.  They sell stock when everybody else is buying.  I call such people contrarions. In the world of antiques you can act as contrarion by shopping for bargains in top quality shops.  "You can't buy from Mary," they say.  "She's a knowledgeable dealer!"  Poppycock.
• Every time something new is invented something old becomes antique.
• No antique looks brighter under the bright lights of an auctioneer's stage than that one item you overlooked during inspection.
• Shelly's Rule: The best tag sales always have the least parking.
• Kathy Lee Gifford's Dictum-An antique that seems too good to be true probably is.
• Monetary value is not a true measurement of great antiques.  Such objects not only open the door to yesterday, they help to shape tomorrow.
• In his last years, after admitting himself into a sanitarium in St. Remy, the Sun went inside Vincent Van Gogh, and he created perhaps his finest work.  No artist with so much belief in himself ever endured such failure.
• If you want to have some fun gambling this year, play the antique lotto.  It's the oldest and best game in town.
• "I could kill my mother!"  I imagine this chilly phrase is hardly ever said in jails or asylums for the criminally insane.  However, at auctions flea markets, shows and other places where common appearing old articles fetch uncanny prices it is the single most uttered phrase.  Sometimes is a gentleman who remembers his boyhood collection of swirled marbles or baseball cards.  "Mom threw them all away!" he says.
• Indoor baseball and Tiffany Lamps do not mix.