Jonah and the Dolphin

(an Antiques Pedant’s warning to the curious)

There are no qualifications for dealing in Antiques.

There are courses and perhaps a few letters can be garnered after your name, but it’s not like Medicine or the Law. You don’t have to get into University then slog for years and years, studying and passing exams to be allowed to set up an Auction House, or open an Antiques shop. Any game soul can put on a top hat and tails, nail their shingle to the wall and hey presto, they’re in Antiques.

This begs the question, who in Antiques actually knows what they’re doing? Unfortunately the answer is far more complicated than the question.

Lots of people judge how much a Dealer or Auctioneer knows simply by how successful they are, surely that makes sense? Well, I hate to drag you down a damascene road screaming, but no, I’m afraid it doesn’t. It does tell you who is good at selling, who is brilliant at self promotion, who can charge and charm the most BUT it’s sadly no guarantee at all that they actually know what they are talking about. There is however a secret way, a special way to find out. Do you want to know what it is? Shall I tell you? Ok I will, you have to…(wait for it)…LISTEN to what they say!

Fame, money, success, a brand new car, a brand new phone and a brand new flat cap can never disguise or muffle the words actually coming out of your mouth. The electric impulses in a confused sub optimal brain cannot be influenced or improved by a bank balance, no matter how large that bank balance may be and how great a gravitational force it exerts. This brings us, as a simple example, to the case of Jonah and the Dolphin.

TV appearances galore and millions, MILLIONS, earned have garnered fame and plaudits both from the Antiques Trade and the broader public for one chippy little flat capped fellow. The assumption of a depth of knowledge is present, yet, by his own hand (or rather mouth) the truth is out there for all to see and hear.

Recently I had the misfortune to see him stroll around a billionaire’s residence, issuing statements of knowledge to the communications Oligarch in question concerning his possessions, quite by chance (or perhaps the intricate plotting of the Director), he happened upon an early oak carved frieze.

“Look” he exclaimed pointing up to the oak relief, “That’s how they used to do Dolphins back then”.

The Oligarch nodded and smiled, having learnt something he’d never really noticed before, his wonderful grotesque, if large, really rather large, ominously large, “Dolphin”.

I imagine in years to come this same Oligarch will probably have sophisticated parties in that very hall with all the most important fawning people in the land. In a tired moment of disdain amidst the gathered hoards he will sip champagne and point upwards to the carved panel and exclaim,

“Look this is how the used to do a Dolphin”.

When he does let’s hope none of his guests notice that it’s a religious scene, (as many early carvings were) and that before this gaping gilled carved Leviathan’s mouth stood a telltale small figure of a man about to be swallowed whole by its enormous jaws, a man called Jonah. If they do will any of them point out to their host that,

“Surely it wasn’t Jonah and Dolphin in the Bible, was it?”

Well maybe not. If they are friends of the Oligarch then they probably won’t know what the Bible is, but you get the point.

Were it just that you might feel I was being harsh, indeed pedantry in my admonishments. Don’t we all get a little muddled at times? But the list goes on. Pembroke tables confused with Sofa tables, Dutch braziers confidently identified as much rarer Irish peat buckets and all from an “expert” in Antique furniture, oh dear.

Sadly he is not an isolated offender, aberrations abound in our Antiques world. Another example (though there is not enough time left in the Universe to list them all) an “Antiques expert” who is also frequently seen on TV, and equally lauded for her “expertise”. When confronted with a mahogany box on stand she confidently issued a startling series of conclusions concerning it. It’s from a ship (because it had an Army & Navy stores stamp), it’s for the Captain’s important documents, and it has a separate base so it can be lifted off and carried ashore. All fascinating detail were it not in fact a very standard box for a canteen of cutlery with the fittings ripped out by the dealer selling it. But why, if she didn’t have the first clue what it was (and she very clearly didn’t) did she feel the impulse to start bullshitting, on camera, to the nation, quite so hard?

Over the years a few people are by accident or misadventure told they are “expert”, wether they are or not. Often by the public, by their peers or even perhaps by a TV producer.  That in itself isn’t the problem. The problem is they are told it so often and for so long that they then begin to believe it. They stop guarding their comments, forget they’ve been busking it for all these years and start pronouncing this and that. Sometimes vague, sometimes wrong or sometimes just the same single learned fact parroted out again and again.

Beware of the tell-tale signs. For example a favourite of mine is spotting anyone professing a knowledge of Japanese Antiques by stating an object is “Meiji Period” and going on to tell you that was between “1868-1912”. It sounds impressive just to come out with that, but then go further and ask them just to name a couple of other periods before and after the Meiji and they may well crumble into dust. It has all the command of someone pronouncing an object to be “Victorian” with little or no other context. It’s flim, flam and flummery. It’s smoke and mirrors, because they’ve spent too long just looking at themselves.

I don’t want to depress you. I’ve met LOTS of very knowledgeable people in the Antiques trade, giants, whose depth of knowledge will terrify then delight you. A few are in TV but the trouble is you probably haven’t even heard of the rest of them. They need digging out I’m afraid, as more often than not they keep squirrelling away, reading, handling, cataloguing, writing and gradually commanding the one small area they have carved out for themselves.

Many aren’t that rich or that successful, they aren’t hustling the next buyer because they’re probably sat in the back room of some Museum. They’re not courting the next consignment into the saleroom because they’re still writing the last chapter of a scholarly article for which they won’t get paid. But these people do exist and if you try and try hard, spending just a little time searching them out, you can benefit from everything they know.

The World of Antiques will always be like this, it attracts both the good and the bad. Just don’t be fooled by a flash car, a flash suit, a flash shop, a flash TV career or a flash smile. Look past it to what they actually tell you, what they actually say and you’ll be alright. You’ll able to confidently swim through the sea of Antiques knowledge like a Dolphin or perhaps even a Whale?