Matt T

Buy old furniture

Nick's column today is a weird one. It contains many of his odder hobby-horses, such as his distate for the FrostFrench boutique, the closure of Camden Passage antique shops (partly related to the internet, I'd have thought), but essentially is a lament that middle-class households don't buy antiques anymore, and this shows that green politics is shallow, and come the recession it'll all collapse as poor people don't buy organic.

There is a point there, which is that 'green consumerism' is essentially an oxymoron. I'd agree you can't buy your way into environmentalism, and the simplest way to be more 'green' is to consume less and use old stuff more.

But his linking it to the antiques market is all a bit confusing, even if you accept the argument that prices are falling because of a lack of demand (I think dining room tables are relatively cheap, but (as Nick hints) I think that's more to do with an increase in supply than an intrinsic hatred of the old) [1].

If antiques are a hand-me down from parents then they're cheaper than buying in Ikea, not more expensive, and if people only go "green" in good times then they should have been buying antiques now, and then not in a recession, but Nick's point is that they aren't buying them in the boom times. Eh? And I think it might be a bit out of date - interior design as slick as a 'City office' is not really the fashion nowadays, he should perhaps ask Frost of French if they know someone who could help.

So a million times better than a column declaring Azar Nafisi has dedicated her book to people she didn't, though I do think Nick is getting a bit arrogant (surely more than 1/100 people could understand Alan Clark's jibe about Michael Heseltine? - I've just asked two people who'd never heard it and they worked it out)

[1] The Antique Furniture Price Index rose from 100 in 1969 (when it was founded) to a high in 2002 of 3,575. It then fell steadily in the next four years, to reach a low at end 2006 of 2,970, before rising again in 2007 to close at 2,986. This doesn't quite chime with 'lowest level for 20 years', but that might be a particular subset.

Labels: Nick Cohen

posted by Matthew @ 3/09/2008 09:11:00 AM Comments: 2