The underside is often more informative than the front. Marks, repairs, labels, screws and old grime can tell you what the auction photograph cannot.
 |
BY IDA MADDER
Writer, traveller, collector of useful opinions and things with a past
There is a moment in almost every auction when an object begins behaving very badly.
It looked perfectly innocent at $40.
At $75, I became interested.
At $110, somebody else bid.
And suddenly I am engaged in a deeply personal dispute with a stranger named Bidder 462 over a porcelain bowl I had not known existed twenty minutes earlier.
This is when good intentions tend to leave the room.
Before they do, there is one useful habit worth developing:
Turn it over.
Not metaphorically. Actually look underneath.
The front of an antique tells you what someone wanted you to see.
The bottom often tells you what happened.
The short version
Turn it over. Photograph the marks. Ask for the boring photographs. Read the condition report slowly. Measure twice. Set your maximum before Bidder 462 appears.
Everything below is detail.
Ask for the unflattering photographs. Then enlarge them.
Auction listings naturally lead with the glamour shot.
Fair enough. Nobody has ever sold a vase by photographing its dusty foot ring first.
But once something catches my attention, I want the photographs that are considerably less seductive.
The base.
The back.
The underside.
The hinges.
The inside.
The corner nobody thought worth photographing.
That is where objects begin talking.
A maker's mark may help establish what something is. An old label may suggest where it was sold. Screws can tell you whether something has been apart. Wear can reveal how an object was handled and used.
And sometimes the underside quietly announces that the magnificent eighteenth-century object you are considering has a barcode sticker from 1997.
Useful information.
If I am bidding online, I enlarge every photograph.
Then I enlarge it again.
Hairline cracks have an astonishing ability to resemble harmless shadows until approximately three minutes after payment.
Look closely at rims, corners, handles, feet and protruding decorative parts. These are the places life tends to reach first.
On framed art, I want to see the back, the stretcher, the edges of the canvas, labels and frame corners.
On furniture, I want underneath.
On ceramics, the rim and base.
On silver and metalwork, I look for dents, splits, solder and areas of suspiciously different colour.
And if the photograph I need is not there, I ask for it.
There is nothing embarrassing about requesting another photograph. I would much rather be mildly irritating before an auction than profoundly disappointed afterwards.
First, look for marks
Marks are wonderful.
They are also dangerous, because the moment we find one, we are tempted to treat it as an answer.
Usually it is a clue.
Depending on the object, you might find a manufacturer's stamp, silversmith's mark, pottery backstamp, foundry mark, retailer's label, country-of-origin mark, pattern number, registration number or an owner's inscription.
Photograph it.
Then photograph it again, because the first photograph will inevitably be blurry precisely where the important letter is.
You do not need to identify every mark while standing in the auction room.
What matters first is noticing that it exists.
A mark may help establish who made something, where it was made, roughly when it was produced or how it entered the marketplace.
Sometimes it does all four.
Sometimes it tells you almost nothing.
The important thing is not to fall in love with the mark before you have looked at the object.
And about those old labels...
Old labels make collectors slightly irrational.
I understand.
There is something enormously satisfying about finding a faded paper label still clinging to the bottom of an object after half a century.
Auction labels, retailer's stickers, exhibition labels, inventory numbers and collection tags can all be useful evidence. Occasionally they connect an object to a sale, collection, shop or place.
But a label is not magic.
Labels can be moved.
People make mistakes.
Old shops occasionally sold new things, just as new shops occasionally sell old ones.
Treat the label as evidence, not as a divine proclamation delivered in slightly foxed paper.
Still, don't peel it off.
Someone seventy years from now may be extremely annoyed with you.
Then look at how it was made
This is where antiques become much more interesting than labels.
Look at the joints.
Look at the screws.
Look at the seams in metalwork.
Look underneath handles and feet.
Look wherever the maker reasonably assumed nobody would spend much time admiring the workmanship.
Older handwork often contains small inconsistencies: tool marks, slight asymmetry, hand-cut joints, uneven finishing.
That does not automatically make something old.
Nor does perfect regularity automatically make something new.
There is almost never one magical clue that settles everything.
What we are looking for is agreement.
Does the construction make sense with the materials?
Do the materials make sense with the supposed age?
Does the wear make sense with the construction?
Does the whole object tell roughly the same story?
You are not trying to become an expert cabinetmaker between Lot 136 and Lot 137.
You are simply learning to ask:
Does the way this was made make sense with the story I am being told?
Repairs are not automatically bad news
One of the quickest ways to miss good antiques is to believe that restoration makes an object undesirable.
Sometimes it does.
Often it simply means somebody cared enough to keep the thing going.
A repaired ceramic handle, an old furniture patch, replaced upholstery or a carefully resoldered joint can all be perfectly acceptable depending on the object, the price and what you intend to do with it.
What matters is knowing the repair exists.
A careful old restoration is very different from a fresh blob of glue enthusiastically connecting two pieces that appear to have met for the first time that morning.
Look for:
-
changes in colour
-
unusually smooth or glossy areas
-
new screws beside old wood
-
solder that does not match its surroundings
-
overpainting
-
glue lines
-
replaced parts
-
surfaces that suddenly behave differently from the rest of the object
And if the auction description says “appears to be in good condition,” remember that this sentence has done heroic work in auction catalogues for generations.
Ask questions.
Wear should make sense
Real wear usually happens where life happens.
Handles get touched.
Drawer pulls soften.
Chair arms acquire polish.
The underside of a plate develops shelf wear.
The foot of a vase becomes rubbed.
Silver darkens in recesses where polishing cloths do not easily reach.
What makes me suspicious is wear that seems strangely democratic.
If every square inch of something has been distressed with equal enthusiasm, the object may be telling you more about the person who aged it than about its actual age.
Good patina tends to have logic.
Ask yourself:
If somebody used this for fifty or a hundred years, is this where I would expect the wear to be?
You do not need a laboratory.
Sometimes common sense is remarkably well equipped.
The front tells you why you noticed the piece. The underside tells you whether you should keep looking.
Read the condition report slowly
Not quickly.
Slowly.
Auction terminology can sound wonderfully reassuring while saying surprisingly little.
“Age-related wear” may be entirely acceptable.
“Some losses” deserves investigation.
“Restoration noted” deserves a photograph.
“Condition commensurate with age” could describe anything from a beautifully preserved object to something that appears to have survived a minor naval engagement.
The words themselves are not necessarily the problem.
The mistake is assuming we know exactly what they mean without seeing the object.
If something matters to your decision, ask.
Measurements are not decorative information
This sounds obvious until a 26-inch ceramic greyhound arrives and you realize your brain had apparently translated 26 inches into quite a nice little dog.
Auction photographs are terrible at scale.
A tiny silver box can look monumental.
A monumental vase can look perfectly manageable until somebody mentions that it requires two people and an unusually understanding staircase.
Check the measurements.
Then take out a tape measure and physically measure the dimensions in your room.
I cannot recommend this enough.
There is something very educational about standing beside a wall holding a tape measure at 31 inches and quietly saying:
“Oh.”
Six questions I ask before I bid
At some point, absolute certainty becomes unrealistic.
The goal is not to know everything.
The goal is to know enough to decide how much uncertainty you are willing to pay for.
Save this before your next auction
-
What do I think this is?
-
What evidence supports that?
-
What condition problems can I actually see?
-
What important part of the object have I not seen?
-
What will it really cost after buyer's premium, tax, shipping, pickup or restoration?
-
Would I still want it if the attribution turns out to be less exciting than I hope?
That last one matters.
Sometimes an object is worth owning even when the romantic story collapses.
If I love the thing at the price I am willing to pay, excellent.
If I only love it because I have convinced myself it was once owned by Napoleon's dentist, perhaps we need another cup of tea.
You are buying the object, not merely the pedigree.
Decide your maximum before Bidder 462 appears
This may be the least glamorous advice in the article.
Set your maximum before the auction.
Write it down if necessary.
Include the buyer's premium.
Include taxes.
Include shipping.
Include restoration if you already know it will need some.
Then stop.
Auction bidding creates the extraordinarily persuasive illusion that another $20 cannot possibly matter.
It can.
Especially when repeated six times.
And there is a peculiar psychological shift that happens once another person wants the same object.
At $80, you were considering a vase.
At $145, you are defending your family's honour.
This is not a useful pricing methodology.
The objective is not to win the auction.
The objective is to buy the right object at a price that still makes sense after your heart rate returns to normal.
Those are very different achievements.
You will still get things wrong
Everyone who buys old things eventually gets something wrong.
I expect to.
A mark gets misread. A repair disappears in the wrong light. A photograph hides exactly the part you should have examined. Something described as small turns out to have ambitions.
You may discover that the charming little bowl is large enough to bathe a moderately cooperative spaniel.
You may buy something you were certain was unusual and discover several thousand close relatives waiting cheerfully online.
You may confidently explain what something is and receive new information almost immediately afterwards.
This is not evidence that you should stop collecting.
It is how your eye improves.
The trick is to make inexpensive mistakes when possible, learn from them and avoid explaining particularly questionable purchases to anyone who was present when you announced that you “knew exactly what it was.”
Curiosity is considerably more useful than pride.
The three-second auction check
Eventually, turning things over becomes automatic.
Pick up a bowl.
Over it goes.
Examine the bottom of the candlestick.
Look behind the picture.
Open the box.
Check underneath the table.
It takes seconds.
Occasionally those seconds completely change what you are willing to pay.
So before you bid, fall in love or begin a private war with Bidder 462:
Turn it over.
There may be a maker's mark.
There may be an old label.
There may be a repair.
There may be absolutely nothing.
But whatever is there, you know more than you did three seconds ago.
And in an auction room, three seconds can be surprisingly valuable.
Practise on ours
The glamorous photograph may catch your eye. We believe the marks, backs, bases and boring bits deserve attention too.
And if something interesting has been hiding underneath one of your old pieces, show us.
#TurnItOverTuesday
I have a feeling the bottoms of our cupboards may be considerably more interesting than we've been giving them credit for.