Love and Desire[i]
Baron Perlman
Some enchanted evening, when you find your true love,
When you hear her call you across a crowded room,
Then fly to her side and make her your own,
Or all through your life you may dream all alone.
Once you have found her, never let her go,
Once you have found her, never let her go. (South Pacific, Richard Rodgers)
Anyone who collects likes or loves the pieces he purchases, or in retrospect, at least most of them. At first perhaps, with a house to fill, liking or expediency for the collector takes precedent over love. But as connoisseurship and the collector’s eye improves engaging in “the hunt” leads to feelings of desire, of wanting, of loving. For some collectors, those labels may not truly capture what they feel when they fall in love with an antique. Lust may be a more accurate label for when pieces seduce them with a throaty “come hither.” Many collectors find the alluring qualities of the antique they look at and touch almost dangerous, as love can be (at least to their pocketbook, perhaps).
American antiques truly are Objects of Desire as Freund described them in his 1993 book. Love is indeed a motivational force and can lead to behaviors that to others appear irrational. Love involves a total preoccupation and focus on a person or object. People love and long for all sorts of things. It motivates the millions paid for an automobile ($200 million is the record- a Mercedes Benz purchased in 2022) just as it underlies the stratospheric amounts paid for some items at auction when two collectors each decide he must own the piece. For love can overcome rational thought and the boundaries of “normal” behavior.
Love is the stuff of novels, television shows, movies, poems, and the theater. Replace these scenes and themes with the voices of special antiques, and heroes and heroines with collectors, and the images remain valid and powerful. Yes, the pull of antiques, the ardent longing, the intense enthusiasm to possess, can be that strong as many collectors know.
Love is a feverish desire for something or someone – a beautiful women or handsome man, money, power, fame, antiques. Religions tend to draw a distinction between passion (acceptable) and lust (sinful). In early Christianity, a sin was considered a transgression against divine law. These transgressions were grouped into a set of vices — lust being one of the “seven deadly” sins. But as collectors know, when they find an antique of their dreams, what they feel if powerful enough may have a sinful tinge to it. Let us call that feeling extreme passion (and not lust) to remove the vestiges of sin.
It is somewhat ironical that after years of training one’s eye, developing one’s connoisseurship, developing an appreciation for the history of Americana and its objects, and what the material culture signifies, that a powerful feeling could be as or more important than all these combined in motivating and maintaining a collector’s desires and spending. Head and heart (loins?). Shakespeare compares love with a form of madness, an observation with which most collectors are familiar and would probably agree. I certainly would. The collector finds powerful forces acting on him and when a collector feels such power, he may become aware of his own powerlessness.
I offer a story of extreme love. I know a collector who long ago decided on the genre he would collect and has stuck to it to this day. When in college he purchased the first truly expensive piece for his collection at a cost of $21,000 (just under $31,000 in today’s dollars). He was in college! It was an insane purchase and he sold 20 to 30 pieces of nice stoneware, he doesn’t remember exactly how many, to help finance the purchase as the cost was far more than he had dollars available. He still owns the piece and in retrospect he agrees that it was a “wildly irresponsible” purchase. But I just couldn’t say no,” he told me. Even though the piece is worth less today he has no regrets.
There is no doubt that love and desire are engines keep the American antique world turning and churning. For “Lust’s passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes (Marquis de Sade).” It certainly does as a motivator for the collectors many of us become. The anticipation of possessing a certain object is part and parcel of antiques being purchased every day and new record high prices for paintings, silver, and the like. The antiques in question match collectors’ templates for something in the world that must become theirs. They cannot live without them.
All of which got me thinking about American antiques I loved and if I had purchased them. Even though hearty love is more than “I want that antique,” or “I really want that antique,” and is more like “I really, really, really want that antique,” that doesn’t mean the piece in question becomes part of a collector’s collection. Sometimes all the robbing of Peter to pay Paul, the moving of money from one pot to another still will not cover its cost. Sometimes collectors must live with unrequited love. It is easy to for collectors to convince themselves that the pieces they let get away are the ones they loved the most. I am not sure that is true, but I can think of a baby blue blanket chest early in my collecting days when fiscal reality trumped my adoration.
In looking at my wife’s and my collection I was struck by the pieces she or I had to own. We really, really, really wanted the Hoadley and Thomas wooden works tallcase clock with a great dial and painted case. We were lucky; we could afford it and appreciate it to this day. As I do our tavern table in the living room and our New Hampshire, walnut, dropleaf Queen Ann dining room table and many other pieces. We are fortunate that we still find these antiques beautiful for over time collectors may no longer love or even like objects they once yearned to possess Love can be a fickle mistress.
The latter may seem a jarring comment but, alas, it is true. For I also was struck by the fact that my desire for these pieces is now but a dimming memory. For love over time cools, its heat ebbing into liking just as romantic love over time transforms itself. The best collectors can hope for is that a few pieces in their collection still kindle the flame of intense passion. Other pieces, once the objects of intense love, have probably become the objects of liking years later. Perhaps that is why collectors constantly upgrade their collection or begin collecting new genres.
And we may love in our hearts until confronted with fulfilling that endearment, and then change our minds. I once lusted after a wooden watch makers sign in the shape of a clock face for some time but when I encountered a fine example, I decided my ardor was misplaced and declined to purchase it. Oh, how we collectors drive ourselves (and dealers) mad sometimes.
Can a collector stop loving so – perhaps? Identifying what pieces and situations trigger the feeling and sticking to whatever dollar amount he has set is a start. Some collectors prone to ardent love not only stop collecting but remove themselves entirely from the powerful stimuli that trigger that love in the first place –shows, auctions, dealers’ shops and websites, The Bee, or Maine Antique Digest.
By acknowledging what collecting means to him a collector can attempt to find alternative activities. Hard won wisdom may provide a solution. One collector I know well told me the following story.
I learned a long time ago that if it’s meant to be, it will be. If not, it’s not the end of the world. The older I get, the more I realize we are just caretakers of these things for a short period of time. If we don’t get a particular item, it was meant for someone else, and I hope the item finds a good home. What I treasure most is the travel and the wonderful relationships I have built through the years with fellow collectors and dealers who have the same passion as I have. And that is all that really matters in the end.
When he saw the gameboard of his dreams, and he still speaks of it today in hushed tones, his perspective on collecting was stronger than mortgaging the farm to purchase it. I wish I had that discipline sometimes.
I continue to collect, and I find love is a closed loop – seeing antiques, loving one now and then, purchasing a loved item, love satisfied, love mellowing or fading over time, and then looking at antiques again. Lucky or cursed, I shall let you decide.
There you have it. Some argue that to be human is to desire what we do not have. It is said that passionate people achieve great things. Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves” says the novelist Laura Esquivel in her work, Like Water for Chocolate.” But in our case, it is not the breath of someone else, the love from those in our lives that strikes the match on occasion, but the American antiques we collect. One could do worse, much worse as a collector. “For where there is love, there is life.” (Mahatma Ghandi)
[i] Baron Perlman is a retired clinical psychologist, antique collector, and author of Come Collect with Me -Musings on Collecting and American Antique and The Collector’s World. If you have comments, email me (baronperlman@gmail.com). Better yet, write a letter to Maine Antique Digest.
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