Birch Hollow Photo by Suzanne Currie
In my late teens, I decided that I wanted to pursue old Canadian glass as a hobby that might one day grow into the kind of obsession affording me enough inventory to open up a small neighborhood antique shop. Seeing as I didn't have much money, back in those formative years learning from history, and the little cash I did have, was keenly spent to acquire a small number of vintage oil lamps offered at area auctions, I decided with a mate to consider excavating old homestead dump sites. Looking mostly for old glass medicine bottles, crockery, particularly stone ginger beer bottles, and even cast off oil lamp chimneys that had survived premature burials. It was hard and dangerous work back in these overgrown homesteads, in part because of the dangers buried in the earth and debris, including old knife blades poking up here and there, huge shards of glass from broken bottles, and of course, some of the chemical contaminates that still existed in corked medicine and poison bottles. I received quite a few cuts and bruises in those out-back semi-archaeological digs, but some of those bruises came while running from bears just recently coming from their dens, and the occasional rogue moose that was curious about my activities in the old junk piles.
What I began explaining in the previous post, was that my two main careers connected early in my adult life, and it was only for a short time that I was an antique hunter, soon-to-be dealer, in the solo sense. By time I hit my twenties with unwieldy and some totally unrealistic ambitions, I had only just graduated creative writing courses at university, pretty much as a poet-in-waiting; at the same time, I was investing whatever I could muster with quite literally pocket change, and lint, in assorted small antiques found at weekend auctions. So when I was out in the field digging up these homestead dump sites, which were amazingly intriguing for a student of history, I was also being subtly influenced by all that surrounded me. It was literally on-the-job training but I never thought about it in this way. Primarily because I hadn't landed my first serious writing gig, at this point, and I was pretty much consumed in the late 1970's, by the potential of opening up my own antique shop. Which I did in the fall of 1977 as I explained earlier. When the business tanked, and my partner parents got job offers at a lumber company in Parry Sound, I was left to seek other employment. That's when history became real, and actuality represented a junior reporter's position with the Muskoka Lakes-Georgian Bay Beacon out of downtown MacTier. To support my antique business, approaching the first of many limbo periods for restructuring but mostly salvaging what could be salvaged, I took gainful employment in the print business, and over time, the two interests merged rather conveniently. Although it was awkward at first.
When I had to work weekends on feature reporting, I inevitably wound up at auction sales around the district. I bought a few bits and bobs, when in my area of interest and affordability, and I'd take a large number of photographs of the auctioneers and the very interesting people who attend such countryside affairs. I was mostly interested in farm and otherwise rural sales, because that was my idea of enjoying the Muskoka allure and the touch of history I craved in the form of old homestead and antiques. Pretty soon, I got to know the auctioneers running these sales, and although I didn't pitch the advantages of putting their notices in our paper each week, the fact that I was running free features on their sales did encourage all of them over time, to honor my feature stories with a little pay-back. They negotiated ad deals from our sales department, and in turn, I was asked to do more features on their sales, and to include some of the local antique businesses operating at the time in our coverage area. It was that simple and fundamental when I look back now, and more clearly appreciate how it all came together over the first twenty or so years of working in both professions.
In a recent post I tried to explain why, over my forty-five plus tenure in both careers, I developed very few close allegiances in either profession. Even today, a long way from my start up in the mid 1970's, there are few colleagues that I can sit down with an commune over our mutual interests in one or the other career areas. I was never in one profession long enough to know what it was like, for example, to be a writer without one foot in the antique trade, where admittedly my heart was, and my affections would remain all this time. In antiques, it's just as hard to find commonality with other dealers, who never complicated their work by also having to write about it for various publications serving unique audiences with specific interests in old stuff and olden times. It's not the case I can't get along with others with similar interests, but in field of antiques, for example, my interests generally, have very little to do with the financial rewards of buying right, and selling high. For most of my years in both enterprises, antiques and writing, I never had to worry about the financial durability of one or the other, as it was more the case of having two potential incomes most of the time. We certainly didn't make our fortune, if we had one, selling antiques, and seeing as I never hit the jack pot as an author, it was more the case that Suzanne and I just enjoyed what we had even in its modest proportion. As Suzanne has been my antique's partner since we married in the autumn of 1983, and the editor of everything I write from the same starting point, we have found our balance working in areas we sincerely enjoy. But it is hard to separate the professions because they have for so long been intertwined with the added complication, of course, that we are also regional Muskoka historians "for hire" with a considerable body of work already published.
And what the union of professions has meant for us, that does make our immersion into history a tad more complex, is that we are frequently influenced by our major finds. In the last post, I mentioned that we had both worked on developing a biographical manuscript regarding the career of Oro-Medonte Artist, Katherine Day, who was well known and respected for her children's illustrations, sketches, paintings, commission graphics, fabric and hooked rug creations. She is buried today in the City of Orillia where she was well known from the 1940's to 1970's. The point is, on one particularly fruitful antiquing adventure, to an antique mall in Orillia, we purchased a cardboard box of archive materials, journals and illustrations from an estate auction for the left-overs of Katherine's art career. It wasn't the entire lot, or even a small portion of the estate, but it was enough for Suzanne and I to build a pretty fair biography, which we published several years back online, and in manuscript format which were donated to each of the museums in Simcoe County and Huronia. The box archive materials was donated back to an art gallery / museum in Orillia, to add to the Katherine Day articles already in their possession. It was our joy to put together our capabilities as antique hunters, with our experience to write historical and biographical feature stories and manuscripts from what we find out on the hustings in our region of Ontario.
In short, Suzanne and I have successfully amalgamated a number of professions that have given us enhanced perspectives about local history, historic characters of our region, and a new respect for antiques, vintage photographs, ephemera, art work, pioneer journals and old books with provenance, that can and should be developed into larger and more significant related profiles to share with a curious readership. Today in that bliss of semi retirement, we can choose our projects based on personal interest, versus the old days when we needed to feed newspaper and magazine copy demands and deadlines. So when we find some interesting items or collection to purchase, it is almost always to piece together the historical puzzle, make the connections with family somewhere in the world, and develop interesting stories based on uncovered provenance, and actualities of once, up to an including the present tense.
And in the end, well, we hope to have something interesting to read here or in some other publication, and a collection of related items to either sell as the antique dealers we profess to be, or donate to a community museum with a vest interest in what we possess. We like the confluences in our lives, and we very much thrive on these adventures to find treasures, on one hand, and new homes for them, once all the sleuth work has been completed.
We aren't just antique dealers, and it's the way we like to live and work.
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