“Canada’s favourite antique & vintage show with hundreds of dealers and almost 10 acres of treasures to be discovered. You’ll find china, jewellery, signs, tins, scientific instruments, folk art, postcards, native artifacts, Canadiana, fine art, nostalgia items, furniture and much, MUCH more! Food vendors onsite. Rain or shine. – you’re sure to find something to love!”
This is the way the Ontario Summer Fun Guide describes the Christie show and I think it’s accurate up to a point. You will find all the things listed above on the field. What they don’t include in the list and I feel should be, is reproductions: and it should be way up the list. Perhaps number one. The field is rife with them. And as you stand there and watch the crowd you realize how few people notice, or perhaps care for that matter, if they are buying a reproduction or not.
I saw a man ask the vendor as he lifted one of ten identical cast iron string holders, “so this is old, right. It looks old.” There’s ten of them sir. He bought it. I rest my case. I’m afraid that sounds elitist but I think it is a fair observation.
This is sort of tragic in the way that a lot of what is happening to our society over the last while is tragic. Fake is as good as real, as long as it makes you feel good about yourself. If it’s cheap and it looks like an expensive thing, who cares? Well I care, and I think a lot of people care.
In the interest of education, and fairness for goodness sake, I think that show management should insist that every reproduction is a clearly indicated on the tag as “Reproduction”. That’s all. In fact a separate, uniform tag with “Reproduction” in big red letters would be best. I think it would make a world of difference, and there’s no down side. Those who don’t care will not begin to do so, those who know it is a repro will no longer be offended, and most importantly those who are in doubt will no longer feel as vulnerable, and will trust the system well enough to go ahead and purchase that item he or she “thinks” is an antique. If we have to accept that reproductions are a big part of our antique and vintage markets today, and I guess we do, then at the very least, label them as such. I would think that it is easy to make a strong case to the dealers that this is in their interest, and I doubt that it would even result in less sales. There’s still always going to be lots of people happy to buy a reproduction if it does the job for them.
The problem with continuing on the current course is that it eventually cheapens everything, and dumbs us all down to the point that it all becomes meaningless. On the field you can already feel that for many it is more of a shopping “experience” than it is an actual attempt to acquire an antique or vintage item. I didn’t see that many people actually carrying anything.
Still, several dealers did tell me that they did o.k. I guess they’ve still got their regulars, and if you sell one or two strong items that can make your day. Also, I have to add that overall, people seemed to be having a good time, and there’s nothing wrong with that is there. It’s a lovely way to spend the day looking at things, eating some junk food (or better. They offer that now), chatting with friends, etc. But to get back to business, bottom line, if not enough enterprise is exchanged, the vendors will give up on it. As will the people.
If you go back ten years the Christie show was run by Jeff and Wendy Gadsden and there was no reproduction allowed. They policed it and would ask you to take down any reproduction they found. In those days the audience demanded this and would complain to the management if they found out they had bought a re-pop. Jeff would go with the offended purchaser and the dealer was confronted. It could get ugly. That seems a life- time ago and a world apart. Where has everyone gone who cared about quality and integrity? Wow, now I’m really sounding like a grumpy old man. But really. What happened? Did the I-phones and I-pads and the whole inter-whoop business melt all of our brains so quickly and completely. I can see I’m on a roll, so I will stop.
I notice that of my principal interests, folk art is number six on the list, and Canadiana comes in at number nine. That feels about right in terms of crowd interest. But it’s hard for those of us who know that for about twenty of the shows thirty years life span, Canadiana was definitely number one. They wouldn’t even let in folk art for the longest time.
Ah well. Not to despair. Change comes, and we never know what form it will take, or when. In the meantime, let’s do our best to keep our interests alive, and support the like-minded people involved as best we can. And let’s agree to label reproductions as reproductions. Some dealers would do it voluntarily if they weren’t afraid of losing their shirts. It’s really up to the show promoters to come up to the plate. I think it would really help this show, and furthermore labeling reproductions as such should be encouraged right across the industry. 
Last week I told the story of recently meeting up with Ewald Rentz’ niece Alyss, and I reproduced an article on the artist from the local paper from 1978. This week I will finish by presenting some more of her observations, and additional photos taken by her of his home and barber shop in Beardmore. I am also going to reproduce an article written by the Thunder Bay Chronicle- Journal on the occasion of his retrospective show at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery in 1993.
I love it when good things fall out of the blue, right into your lap. It had been a long time since the cosmos had flipped me a lucky card, and I remember thinking about a month ago that perhaps things were quiet because I had been out of the circle for so long (my last show being Bowmanville in 2014) that collectors had basically forgotten about me. It seemed a reasonable assumption, even after 30 years in the business, because it can be a case of what have you done for me lately. But then two things happened. First, I had a call from a Montreal folk art collector I have known for years, but had not heard from for at least ten. He explained that his wife had died recently and it had come time to downsize and disperse the collection. He has some great things so I am looking forward to starting this process. Then the following day I got a call from a lovely woman from Thunder Bay named Alyss Rentz. She was married to Gary Rentz who was Ewald Rentz’ nephew. I am a huge Rentz fan, and it had been a long time since anyone from the family had contacted me. Alyss explained that her husband had died and she too was downsizing; and she has five pieces by Ewald that she would like to sell. As it happened she was coming to Hamilton the following week to visit relatives and she could bring the pieces with her. She described the pieces and after seeing hundreds of Rentz’s over the years I knew from her description that I was interested. She told me she would call when she arrived in Hamilton. Great! I was immediately looking forward to it.
Gnarled Branches, Knots, made into Objects of Art, by Gerry Poling
In the mid 1990’s we did what turned out to be a one time show in the Laurentians ski area north of Montreal. During ski season in the club house of a popular ski hill. The assumption was that the multitude of skiers would come off the slopes and couldn’t help themselves from wandering through the show and selecting a few prime antiques for their ski chalets. Turns out this assumption was wrong, and we spent three days watching people ski, and then going directly to their cars and leaving. We rented a chalet with friends and so when we were not busy doing nothing at the show we at least had some good food and laughs in commiseration. It turned out to be a pretty expensive venture which didn’t really pay off, if it was not for the fact that in being there we came across one of the best and most important pieces of Quebec folk art we had ever encountered.
“Maple Sugar Time”
Back in the 1990’s I would occasionally get a call from a friend, Marty Ahvenus, who owned and operated the Village Book Store on Queen St at the time. He was a book seller by trade who also enjoyed folk art and making periodic trips to the East Coast. When he returned from a trip he was in the habit of phoning me, and selling me the folk art which he had acquired enroute. We would meet at a French restaurant on Baldwin Street which offered fish soup, a favourite of both of us, and I remember that the owner/chef would always come out to see who had ordered the soup as so few did. But that’s another story.
shadflyguy 