Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms. Guido Bruno
drawers and dozens of pigeon-holes, where once letters reposed that meant so much to the writers and recipients. I like to think of the soft, well-cared-for hands of some Prince of the church, who wore the beautiful Bishop’s ring hundreds of years old that will adorn perhaps tomorrow the jewel-case of an American millionairess.
There are divans and chairs. … Who used them? In whose home have they served? Where will they go to from here? The mystery and romance woven around all the various works of art and useful objects that have withstood the destructive powers of time and men is captivating. How did all these things get into the fashionable antique stores?
Most of them were purchased from other antique dealers; some were bought in auctions and obscure places and a few were purchased from another kind of antique dealer who are not very infrequent in New York.
Where there is mystery there are surely people who wish to solve the mystery, and very curious people are these “detectives of the antique.” The peripatetic antique dealers are in a true sense connoisseurs. They prowl about all sorts of out-of-the-way places; storage houses, auction rooms, in garrets of houses that will be torn down and in cellars of old family dwellings, unoccupied perhaps for generations. They sense the value of a thing the moment they see it. Some of them are scholarly gentlemen who have a great book knowledge, who know more than professors in our universities and curators of our museums. Others know by intuition. And a few have the instinct of a Sherlock Holmes and the sense of adventure of a pirate.
Some weeks ago I noted the following advertisement in the American Art News. It sounded mysterious as well as promising:
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
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