Old Things Are Better

I like old things and have many antiques (not counting me) in my home that I have never had a desire to change for modern furnishings. When those young brats snicker about their parents having a house filled with family furnishing that "looks like granny's" I simply smile and comment on their IKEA fashion style and am amused at the thought that their furniture ( IKEA style of cheap plastic and particle broad origin) will be worth little 250 or a hundred years from now, if it even exists then.  There is a reason people treasure old things when they are older. Not only is it that they like the familiarity, but they see from experience it is better quality and more interesting than mass produced furnishings.

I like furnishings that have an aesthetic appeal that is unrelated to time, to what is fashionable today.  Today's mass produced furniture is often like the Nehru jacket or leisure suit of my youth-- laughable. Some people believe that an object’s aesthetic value is a matter of personal taste. They are wrong. It must have universal appeal separate from time. Some pieces of art and furniture have almost universal aesthetic appeal.  You know right away that they have the "it" factor. Just go to a museum an look for awhile and you'll understand that.

Another thing that I like about older things is the rarity factor. If fewer were made (which is likely before machine made mass production made things more affordable, if also more ugly) and fewer still exist, I am likely to be attracted to it. Also, if it is of uncommon style or shape and has not been copied so much that it has been cheapened by imitation, I'll probably like it.

But really, for me it is the craftsmanship that appeals to me. When I see a well formed old furnishing my imagination takes me to that time, to the person I imagine made it and to those who I imagine loved it in their own home. It connects me to the past in this current age in which the past is seen as annoying or irrelevant. It lets me thumb my nose at the IKEA generation and all the crassness that it represents. It assures me that humans are capable of better than cell phones and other electronic time wasting garbage that so many find dear