It’s officially spring, and with the season, comes a natural urge to purge, clean and clear the clutter from your home.
It’s amazing how sentiment can often override good sense, initiating pack-rat mode, which leaves you with shelves, cupboards, boxes, and sometimes entire rooms filled with long forgotten stuff.
All that clutters is not necessarily junk, though, and it may be worth your while to have a good look at some of your stuff before carting it away to the thrift store, share shed or garbage dump.
It’s also not fair to say that sentiment has no value. Maybe rather than stashing away, or getting rid of the purely sentimental pieces, it may be practical to spruce up the large ones and perhaps frame smaller items to make them functional or worthy of display.
Hank Smith, of Smith Antiques and Lighting in Lone Butte, knows all too well of some valuable treasures that have slipped through the hands of their owners because they lacked the time or the interest in doing a little research or restoration work.
He recently ran across an old and tarnished brass bed frame, which had been left at a local share shed. It didn’t look like much to the untrained eye, but he knew that under the many years of grimy buildup, there was something of value.
It will take many tedious hours of cleaning, but in the end, he estimates its worth will be in the neighbourhood of $2,000.
Even items like fancy teacups and pieces of silverware are of value to somebody, Smith says.
“People collect just about anything. There are people who even collect barbed wire.”
He is truly passionate about antiques, and intrigued with their history and the process of finding it.
It’s become a trademark that has grown for him during the past 30 years of being involved in the business. He has been around antiques all of his life, as his father also dealt in antiques and his grandfather was a master wood craftsman who built furniture for the historic Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City.
Through his business, Smith has collected a vast assortment of interesting and unique items, and among them is an old, hand-drawn framed map of Iceland, which came into his shop a while ago. He bought it because it appealed to him, but after some quick research on the Internet, he discovered it was created in 1635 and is worth around $1,200 to a collector.
A set of distinctly English hand-coloured etchings depicting hunters on horseback also came his way not too long ago. They needed some TLC, but the story behind the pictures interested Smith enough to make him buy them.
According to the seller, they came by way of a garage sale from the home of Lord Martin Cecil of Exeter who is basically the father of 100 Mile House. The frames were also unique in that they were constructed with tiny handmade nails.
“In this case, they are not just items – it’s history,” he says, adding it’s often the same for items handed down between generations of family members. Something of moderate value can be seen as more valuable to the owner because of personal connection.
Old furniture is commonly passed down through generations and apart from being a remembrance of someone known to you, most pieces are constructed from valuable wood, which makes them worth hanging on to, or at least, finding them a good home.
The key to preserving the value and beauty of a piece of wood furniture, whether it is in storage or in use, is protecting its finish.
Smith cringes when he sees an antique that has been left outside.
“Water can warp a piece and that’s very difficult to repair. Any kind of mistreatment or unnecessary marks from water or scratches is bad.”
A sure way to ruin an antique is to put a coat of paint on it, he adds.
“I’ve seen people go to the trouble of stripping the finish off a piece and then painting it. It’s not good, because the wood absorbs the paint and it’s very difficult to remove it later.”
If you have old furniture, he notes, take care of it by cleaning it with lemon oil and regularly coating the surface with a good furniture wax.
Every antique has a story, and not too many years ago, Smith had to rely on stacks of books to reference information. The Internet has changed all of that, and now with a little time and patience, almost anybody can research a piece and find its history and value.
That’s what he would like to see people do, and insists there is a home for almost anything.
“Look closely at what you have, and if you don’t want it, it may still be salable. Even if you don’t value it, someone else might.”
