Do Your Antiques Speak To You?

Born into immense wealth Henry Francis du Pont grew up in a home named "Winterthur," after an ancestral estate in Switzerland. As a youth, he collected birds’’ eggs and minerals on the Delaware property. At the turn of the century he studied horticulture at Harvard. Du Pont became as famous to gardeners as he is remembered by antiquers. He became captivated with American antiques and, by the time of his death in 1969, du Pont had amassed nearly 100,000 objects. Today, the stately home and the famous gardens he created are open to the public thanks to his passion for antiques and landscaping and his civic spirit.

Mr. du Pont became known to antiques dealers as a gentleman with an aristocratic mien who possessed highly personal and equally magical gifts. Legend has it that when he stepped into New York’’s exclusive antiques galleries, he was able to find important antiques that other collectors had overlooked. It was as if the decorative objects spoke to him alone. When he discovered a great example of early Americana he would exclaim, "It speaks to me." He was often seen holding his arms out in the manner of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster with quivering hands. Du Pont would, for a moment, set aside his upper-class sensibilities and shout out, "It’s mine! It’s mine! I’ll talk price with you later. I can’t talk now. It’s mine!"

We have heard tales of otherwise normal people who behave like whirling dervishes when that little voice says, "Come over here, you missed me." How many times have you been ready to leave a shop when that inner voice whispers "look again?" One of the thrills of collecting is the hunt. It helps if you develop the extraordinary magical gift of listening for your prized collectibles or antiques to speak to you.

My friend Dottie, who lives near Princeton spends most of her early retirement dollars driving around The Garden State hunting for 1950's toys. Her bumper sticker reads, "I Brake for Antiques!" Dottie’s finely tuned inner voice has been known to scream, "Get off at the next exit. Now!" She never thinks she has gone a bit dotty for inevitably she finds just the toy that she has been in search of for her collection.

Many collectors know the satisfaction of rescuing overlooked items from dingy antiques shops or flea markets. They heeded the call. We can share the sentiments of the writer Walter Benjamin, a collector of rare books. He explained that, "one of the finest moments of a collector is the moment when he rescued a book which he might have never given a thought, much less a wishful look, because he found it lonely and abandoned on the marketplace and bought it to give it its freedom––the way the prince bought a beautiful slave girl in The Arabian Nights." "To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves."

Another rare book lover is my attorney friend Marshall, who boasts that he intuitively knows when it is time to escape from the legal brief on his computer screen and log in to eBay. Marshall has developed that amazing sixth sense that tells him something spectacular is going down on the computerized auction site.

So, if you start hearing voices while you are shopping, or driving, or even working on your computer, maybe it isn’t time to check out your emotional health. It may just be a golden opportunity to seek out and obtain a new prized possession for your collection!

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