The Beauty of Antiques

I recently acquired a 1908 Singer treadle sewing machine. This object is 115 years old and while I only know the person who owned it for a part of its life before me, it has had an entire lifetime before that with someone else. It still works and has all of its parts. The springs, coils, metal pieces and mechanisms all function as if it was just assembled yesterday. When staring at it next to my first and only sewing machine, also a Singer, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for how things were once made.

I know what you’re thinking: “Andrea, that’s golden age thinking.” And perhaps you’re right. It’s easy to romanticize the past, but when I place my new treadle singer next to my 2021 singer, I can’t help but cringe at the shiny plastic body and cheap parts of my electric contemporary one when placed next to the glorious gold embossed and hand painted black metal, wood and iron base of my new antique machine.

I felt similarly just the other day while walking around Boston visiting different museums and quaint neighborhoods. We kept pointing out to each other the patina-stained iron on old building facades, the delicate details even in the concrete moldings and the deco and nouveau inspired curves and edges highlighting iron fire escapes. Functional and aesthetic - why shouldn't the every day hint at some form of beauty and design? Even the shakers and their highly functional and plain forms achieved a particular sophistication that inspired mid 20th century furniture with its bold lines and sleek curves. So what happened? Do we always sacrifice aesthetics, composition (and sometimes quality) for instant and short-term function? Will my 2021 singer outlive my 1908 one? Or, like my 2011 Subaru Impreza, will the plastic pieces eventually snap and the bumper will need to be zip tied with more plastic.

I suppose demand increases production of supply and so forth. I personally don’t know much about the complex economics of globalization - or at least what I do know comes from an extreme liberal bias and one shouldn’t talk about politics at the table - but what I do know is that my 2021 Singer sewing machine is ugly and my new 115 year old one is a true work of art.

All this to say is that antiques can be really beautiful and some items of the past, often handmade or thoughtfully designed, can sometimes outlive their contemporary counterparts because they were built to last and withstand. And when they do, it’s their age that makes them even more beautiful: the whisper of a story or previous life once lived, the mystery of someone, somewhere using or admiring the object in the same way we do now. Objects tell stories: I often wonder what the objects of today will say about us in the future.

Something my cat, sleeping atop my antique dresser, curled up on my antique linen cloth from the 1900’s, clearly doesn’t even think about.