It might have been a jolly season for some, but things have never looked so grim for those whose livelihoods depend on turned legs and a beautiful piece of mahogany. The antiques trade appears to have been blown out of the water since people started reading Wallpaper* and spending their money on contemporary Italian furniture at Heal's rather than on rarities lit by crystal chandeliers in those little shops at the Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells.
The experience of my friend Tuggy Meyer sums up the malaise. His mother, Pamela Teignmouth, founded an antiques dealership on Kensington Church Street in London 50 years ago. But Pamela Teignmouth & Son is now selling off its stock and closing down. In a few months, it will reopen as a fine wine emporium, with Meyer at the helm. He says he now sells six times more booze than furniture, and estimates that roughly a third of his contemporaries in antiques are considering leaving the trade.
"Previous recessions have been cyclical," says Meyer. "But this time the business will never spring back to what it was." For a start, there's the dearth of American money. Also, the entire buying process has changed. In the olden days, a Chippendale table might surface at a West Country auction, where it would be picked up by a local dealer. A "runner" would notify an antiques shop in, say, London's King's Road, from where it might go on to Meyer, who would in turn sell it to another dealer in Bond Street. "It would go through five or six hands, each making a small but immediate profit," says Meyer. "Now if you find a great piece of Chippendale, it will already have been spotted by a top dealer, who will go for it at source."
Antiques dealing used to be a bit like grocery shopping. Meyer says he would sell 15 pieces during the week and replace them all on Saturday morning, ready to flog the next week. "It was a fantastic business. When I began 22 years ago, I was earning more than my City contemporaries." The company was once listed in the top 100 of British businesses. Now it's not worth opening on Saturdays.
It's a remarkable sea change. Antiques were once a mark of considered adulthood: you graduated from Habitat sofas to Georgian dining tables with matching chairs, or at the very least might have hoped to inherit a Victorian inkstand. Now antiques are fast heading the way of the porcelain figurine or Delft vase - they won't disappear completely, but have become the province of dedicated collectors or TV guessing games (Antiques Roadshow, et al).
"People with money are much younger than they used to be," says Meyer. "They see their parents' houses full of this stuff, and they really don't want it. They want the designer look. Also, they won't want to mooch down Kensington Church Street looking for antiques on a Saturday. Bankers now work until 10pm on Friday nights and then push off out of London for long weekends in Tuscany."
They all still like getting pissed, though. Meyer's bespoke wine business, Huntsworth Wine Company, has expanded so much that he has developed The Wine Wedding List (TWWL) - not for the reception, but for stocking the bride and groom's wine cellar, apparently a common feature in the antique-free abode of the stylish City employee.
