Charlene Smith
Minnie Mouse, Mickey Mouse, flying ducks and cheaply made chintzy porcelain with transfer printing are among the hottest items selling at antique dealers now.
And while your mother or grandmother may have paid a few bob for them in the Fifties, they are now selling for thousands.
Kitsch rules. Royal Winton, described by Brett Martin of Westgate-Walding, one of the top auction houses in Johannesburg, as ”really shabby porcelain, with very attractive chintzy transfer printing” sells at R8 500 for an 11-piece coffee set while a few years ago the same set would have sold for R300 or R400.
In part, the South African market is battling to cope with a drain of good antiques to London markets.
Clarice Cliff and art deco porcelain have almost disappeared from South African stores for South Kensington sales in London.
On the other hand, a lot of cheap Victorian antiques, particularly mahogany furniture, are arriving here from Britain, where they have been bought inexpensively, and are selling at grossly inflated prices.
If you are buying wood, everything lies with the patina. Martin says the quickest way to begin learning about furniture is acquiring knowledge about patina, the lustre that builds on wood after decades, or centuries of loving care, dust, polish and human caress.
Martin says a lot of furniture being bought nowadays has little or no patina.
But many nouveau riche buyers will not buy, for example, a beautiful chest of drawers that may have one drawer slightly battered by age and time ”because it doesn’t look new”.
Vusi Phungula, one of Johannesburg’s more successful new antique dealers, was seduced by patina.
And when he realised township residents were throwing out beautiful old pieces to buy cheap chain-store junk, he saw a business opportunity.
In three short years, the KwaZulu-Natal-born antiques dealer opened three successful stores in the antique-selling triangle of Parktown, Parkhurst and Greenside.
Now he plans to open an interior decorating business because so many clients ask his advice on what to buy, where to place it, and what else to group around it.
A teacher by profession, he took the path the novice buyer should take, he visited a lot of stores and asked many questions.
He bought the annual Miller’s Antiques Price Guide and studied that.
”You make a lot of mistakes in the beginning, you buy the wrong thing, but you learn from those mistakes.”
Phungula worked as a runner for antique dealers for four years – buying from farms and townships – and then opened a shop in Parktown North.
”I looked for another store nearby to complement mine. People who buy antiques browse. It is a luxury and they shop around.”
Initially he found buyers did not trust an earnest young black man, so he hired an elderly white woman with a foreign accent, and sales soared.
However, serious buyers have come to respect his knowledge and he has developed a huge clientele among black yuppies.
He concentrates on Victorian furniture, which is a consistently good market, here and abroad, but it is not a market for the budget conscious.
For example, extension dining room tables are in demand, but are very rare and sell at between R20 000 to R40 000 for a good mahogany or walnut piece.
Matching chairs are difficult to find, and a set of 12 will fetch R40 000 to R60 000.
Phungula advises the novice to start off with small items like wine tables, that cost between R3 000 to R4 000 or piano stools at R2 800.
Most reliable dealers will give valued clients the opportunity to pay over six months.
However, antique dealer Simon Leighton-Morris says antiques are often cheaper than mass-produced items from modern stores.
”In Sandton you can pay up to R14 000 for a perspex coffee table, while a Victorian two- drawer desk can be bought for R2 800, a chest of drawers R6 000 or a chiffonier R4 500.”
Martin agrees: ”You can buy a R20 000 dining room suite from a chain store and it’s worth R5 000 the minute you walk out the door. But antiques appreciate in value.”
”Buy what you like, from a reputable dealer and ensure you get full certification on everything purchased,” says Leighton-Morris. ”Look carefully at the item. Could it be made today? Study the veneer, dovetailing, the overall quality.”
He suggests the first-time buyer can save up to R3 500 or R5 000 rather than learning by default- and at great expense by going the junk-store route.
An example of how antiques increase in value: about five years ago a linen press could be bought for between R5 000 and R8 000.
”Then everyone wanted one to put booze or the TV in, and now an average linen press costs R15 000 to R25 000,” says Martin.
Small pieces of Victorian walnut have also appreciated strongly. Twentieth century decorative arts, such as ceramics and good glass – such as Lalique – and art deco or art nouveau bronzes, are very popular.
Minimalism and modern kitsch has seen even the Seventies percolate on to auction floors.
Good front-sprung 1970s lounge suites sell well and fetch a few thousand rand, whereas a wooden-frame sofa will fetch a mere R300 or R400.
Antique dealers are unanimous in their condemnation of what they call ”Saturday afternoon schlenter auctions, where dealers advertise Persian rugs, South African art and bronzes which they put in an old empty house and sell”.
If you are new to the world of antiques, ensure the dealer is registered with the Antique Dealers Association at (011) 792 5627.
The association has a list of registered dealers, none of whom deal in African art and artefacts, but include sellers of Victorian and Georgian furniture, jewellery, silver, books and oriental items. They also distribute booklets with lists of registered dealers free to the public.
A good dealer will have a buy-back clause – if you can prove within a month or a few weeks that their catalogue listing was incorrect, they will buy back the item.
There is a world of fascination in antiques and collecting. People collect everything from old cars and motorcycles to stamps, coins, African art and artefacts, radios, kitchen goods, china, glassware, silver, Cape copper and rare Cape silver, firearms and even theatrical or cinema posters.
Here are a few of the best outlets for some of these items:
Books – Thorolds in Johannesburg or Clarkes Bookshop in Cape Town.
African art and artefacts – Totem Gallery and Mark Valentine wholesalers in Johannesburg.
Victorian furniture – Julian Adler in Cape Town, Antiques and Bygones in Durban, Leighton- Morris, Millennium and By George in Johannesburg.
Auctioneers – Westgate- Walding, Sotheby’s or Thornton’s in Johannesburg or Ashby’s Galleries in Cape Town.
ENDS