By Charles Taker
Last weekend I attended the Expo (formerly known as the Eastman) Antique & Vintage Show. While many of the fifty dealers specialized in Quebec folk art, there was a little something for everybody from “brocante” to high end with an array of price points.
While popular art seems to be the taste of the trendy, I tend to prefer more classical and formal European Georgian, Victorian, or even Edwardian (brown) furniture and “objets” as well as religious art. I have never aspired to be “à la mode”, I simply collect what stirs my imagination and piques my interest. Much of it is not even terribly expensive. Having observed the best of the aesthetes in The World of Interiors, Architectural Digest and other aspirational magazines, I think I have done a pretty good job at training my eye to be able to identify quality items and to create beautiful tableaux throughout my home.
To echo the late great English aesthete, Robert Kime, “My philosophy around collecting is simply being open and interested; it happens very much in the moment and without a lot of second guessing. Putting rooms together and moving things about is done more by intuition than by plan and the things I collect become a part of the story, the fabric of the rooms, which are not based on a system of perfection, but on liveability and comfort. You might have something modest next to something grand, each collected, but together they say something special.”
