When wandering a city, I tend to step inside antique stores as I come across them. The storekeepers often don’t trust me; a young person dressed in jet black and baggage. With white earphones, tattered sneakers, and an expression of unsociable searching, I don’t seem to instill the confidence the dealers need to believe that I am entirely capable of purchasing a three-hundred-year-old piece of caoromandel.
At one particular store in Saint Louis, I was asked what my business entailed. And at another, I was simply asked to leave. At each store but one or two, my slow steps through the store are traced with unwavering precision by the sharp old eyes of whomever sits behind the desk. I am no expert in antiques, and I don’t try to act like one. I can tell the difference between English and French, cherry and oak, but know little of the necessities and the nuances of a fineantique. My simplicity is probably obvious as I weave through the rooms, but that’s no matter. I enjoy old things made by old people. That is all.
My parents once dealt heavily in antiques, and from them I learned not the names and styles, nor the prices. It was only to do with presence and aura. In our house, and in mother’s store, sat heavy things that asked you to recognize the care in which they were made, and likewise the time and the culture. By learning and re-learning the difference between spilling on mother’s carpet and leaving a circular mark on her gorgeous coffee table, I began to appreciate the character and quality of an original long before I myself was an artist. Simply by measuring the anger in her instruction.
With her store now closed, and her person often far from where I happen to be existing, I find a random visit to an antique store to be an exquisite way of waking the echoes between me and my mother, and the old old house we once shared. Each store, a satellite realm of my childhood. The smell of finished wood, the stuffy corridors between rooms, and even the decorative spectacle of crystal and small collectibles all bring me closer to the warmth my mother brought to her work. I have unending patience for the rude and untrusting storekeeper, just as I do for the woman that came home each day with stories of shady visitors in her own store. As I absorb their scowls and suspicion it is easy to remember my mother, and the faces she often gives me as she fails to understand. And that’s why it’s easy to offer a plain and humble smile as I leave without welcome.
It is often said by artists that an eternal condition they each share is the need for their art to be explained to their parents. In my case, this is often especially true. And yet I’ll always believe that I have a bond and an advantage that many artist don’t. Because for all that my mother will never see, with a visit to any antique store, I am reminded that I was raised in a home filled with what the masses still fail to understand. Raised by a mother that from the very beginning held a profound appreciation for that which is made with the hands, and can only exist in one place. Years previous to the day I found it necessary to escape the world of the ordinary and easily reproduced.
This is of course Yesterday’s story, and one of today’s finer, more delicately carved difficulties.