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It’s ironic - the very people who collected antique furniture and financed the boom in reproduction furniture in 1960s and 1970s Britain, are the ones now flooding the market as they down-size.
And these down-sizing baby boomers are superseded by a generation that ‘open plan’ their homes and takes a wholly different view of the need for furniture. If it isn’t bling, slightly retro or Scandi look, we don’t want it.
The result is there’s never been a better time to buy old furniture – green, environmentally friendly pieces that do not create carbon emissions or waste products because they have done that already - 100 years ago - and been recycled several times since. They were most probably made here by local
craftsmen.
They don’t owe the environment a penny and are helping save the planet each time they are sold on. Most importantly, they are not the automatic landfill of next week, month, or year.
One of the reasons why there’s never been a better time to buy a Georgian table, or an Edwardian sofa is that prices are estimated to be around 50% lower than they were less than a generation ago.
Yep. What goes around comes around. We are – eventually - accountable for everything we do and that includes how we manufacture, use, and dispose of furniture.
Those that can, cast your minds back to the 90s and the advertising campaign messages of an international furniture and homeware brand. It featured skips being used to simply throw away yesterday’s styles – don’t live like your parents was the message. It spread like wildfire.
Sadly, around that time marks the start of the decline in the antique furniture market. It would have perhaps been better to have had a more considered approach. Perhaps a cooling off period. Think before you skip and then drive 40 miles to buy a replacement which has been shipped in from overseas and done nothing to create manufacturing jobs and infrastructure in the UK.
Remember, you youngsters who lecture us older folk. Save the Planet.
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