Blog - April 2008
Confessional of an antique dealer and the lure of the great outdoors
I don't imagine that there are too many people right now, in this neighborhood or in yours, wishing as a first and only.... one to-be-granted request, to be immersed in the misty heart of a spring awakening woodlands, and that the only intrusion be the occasional winged creature, large or small, beating its path across your line of vision....or the soothing wash of the hundreds of little waterfalls that sound in unison, dropping the little creek at my feet many levels on the black snaking path toward the lake. Oh, there are probably a few folks who would like to push away from the office grind, pull away from the business community, the chores of the day, to stand here with the writer in his field, and admire what the good earth is all about. But it's a pretty small number of souls of all those in peril, and we wouldn't have any problem fitting in the eager "takers" on a pretty small knoll situated above the bog. Most would prefer a day at the spa if it came down to an "either-or", versus getting soakers treking through this lowland looking for tadpoles and newly emerging wildflower blooms.
It is so beautifully sun-bathed here now, the wetland and wooded hillside being washed in a most soothing, restorative sunlight, the buds on trees and sundry other shrubs by the trillions, are all in the throes of passionate rebirth....meeting sun and sky and heavens above with great expectation of the rains to come later, nourishing the blooms of mid May and full boughs of early summer when this sunscape will be shadowy and cool in the afternoon heat.
When I began working in the antique trade I was very much inspired by farm culture, pioneer ways and means, and open spaces where the collector/researcher could roam old homesteads and forgotten graveyards of which there are many dotted across the countryside.....one day to be disturbed unceremoniously by the urban developer's bulldozing brigade, stretching the cityscape where once farms and cultivated fields wavered in the misty morning light of its own fading history.
As a young antique collector/dealer, I never missed a farm auction and any sale outside the urban area of Bracebridge, Ontario. The exception was the occasional estate sale in town where there were plenty of antiques and provenance to the old days, old families, who founded the mid-Muskoka community. My greatest joy was to hunker down against an old gnarled maple, affording a soft landing place below and the shade against the summer sun, to watch a good old fashioned auction sale unfold. I lost a lot of girlfriends in the early going because this wasn't their idea of fun on a Saturday. True it was shopping but not the kind they held near and dear. To me it was heaven on earth because I was immersed in the natural day.....no hall with electric lighting for me - and I could watch and bid on important pieces of our heritage in natural comfort. I never once got bored watching a country auction. I used to write a column for the local press about auctioneering with advice on how to get the most for the least, the best and authentic antiques, and how to avoid breaking the bank and still get desired pieces. I wrote a lot of copy in my head sitting there on that clump of soft grass with a contoured shade tree at my back. While some of the great writers in history sat in cafes in Paris, and in tiny cottages on bluffs above the raging sea, I wrote with a tree at my back and the scent of spring lilacs permeating the air.
I said to my wife just the other day....(Suzanne has come to a thousand auctions and even admits to enjoying several) that I would love to throw-back to that golden era of antique questing.....and put ourselves back in the country scheme of things the way it always was..... As some of the great old auctioneers passed on or retired, the new brand of caller is enamoured by indoor sales and the total reduction of job-lots, which was always my favorite auction purchase......ten or so boxes of goodies being sold as one lot in the essence of time.....and the stuff yet to auction off. I got some of my best finds this way. But it was the country air, the feeling of open spaces, of history, of the pioneering spirit, that attracted us to these farm and estate auctions. We adored being able to wander throught the wildflowers in the left-fallow pastures, and bask in the sun on a meadow incline in between items we intended to bid on....watching our wee lads make little straw boats to float in battle upon the overgrown farm pond.
I suppose it is at the pioneer's expense, the more recent farm owner's demise or default that we are enjoying ourselves, and believe me I don't like the thought of that possibility......because of course we'd rather see these beautiful country estates and sprawling farms survive another century......but it would be fiction to believe this. Many old homesteads I attended for those concluding auctions decades ago, are now a memory in the criss-crossing of subdivision lanes and tennis court fencing.....somewhere under the swimming pool is a remnant of the root of the old maple tree I once used as a backrest.....ah, that's the change that hurts the soul.
My heritage as an antique dealer has always been with the outdoors.....and by insistence I expect it always will be.....and in my collection at any one time you will see this reflected by the many landscape paintings, the folk art, the treen ware that reminds me daily of the importance of nature in all our lives all of the time......despite the fact admittedly, only a few folks, at this precise moment in time, would care to jaunt through these haunted woods, at the expense of a dollar lost being non-productive in the new century order.
Whenever I feel weak of soul and lagging in spirit, and my body feels particularly urban-drained, and my inspiration low, a retreat to the woodlands here at Birch Hollow, restores good faith nature hasn't abandoned us......though it can be said with some accuracy, we have most definitely neglected a history-imprinted partnership. I could never turn my back on a friend. I might even take root here, standing for the better part of this morning, admiring the honest, pure pleasure of our natural places.