The great Philly quest

When this column is published on Oct. 4, I should have just returned from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Let me tell you how this eastward trek came about.

My wife and I have collected antique furniture since 1971 and our house is filled with 18th and early 19th century furniture, though as such things go, our pieces are not very fancy. But all those who collect are similar in some ways: There’s always a ceiling and a class of pieces that are unattainable (and, therefore, highly desirable), and this is true for every collector, no matter his means.

I remember an interview with Nelson Rockefeller, who collected modern art, and he commented that he couldn’t afford the very best stuff. Back when my wife and I were stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1971 and 1972, and started putting together a household of furniture, we performed the same calculations as did Rockefeller when determining whether we could afford a piece; we just moved the decimal point three or four places to the left.

We liked country furniture; that is, furniture made in simpler forms with woods such as pine and poplar, but it wasn’t long before we became interested in a better grade of such furniture, pieces with better form and better woods, such as walnut, cherry and maple. We’d also go to shops at which all we could do was gawk at antique furniture soaring above our means. Even though we couldn’t remotely afford it, there was one kind of furniture that I really fancied, and that was Chippendale furniture, made in the United States around the last quarter of the 18th century.

Thomas Chippendale was an English cabinetmaker who in 1754 wrote a book that was immensely influential, “The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director.” It took a while for the book to find its way to the American colonies, and to become generally known. But by 1770 the best colonial cabinetmakers had all read it closely, and they started producing furniture following the designs of Chippendale, but presented in the American vernacular. As interpreted in America, the furniture forms were simpler, and emphasized the beauty of native woods. And in so doing, American cabinetmakers created classic pieces, cleaner and finer in form than the English pieces. Indeed, the best furniture produced in America in the late eighteenth century was as good as anything in the world.

Celia and I returned to Wyoming and I started practicing law, but we continued to collect antique furniture including a few of the simpler Chippendale pieces. We never could afford the more formal items, however, such as good Philadelphia chests of drawers with a kind of elegant foot called an ogee foot, one which describes an S-shaped curve. So, through the years we’d look at antiques magazines and fantasize about someday having one of those fantastic items, but not really thinking we would ever be able to afford them. But then came 2008.

2008 was the year when the stock market crashed, briefly to half of what it had been in 2007. The economy has come back most of the way now, but, remarkably, eight years later, some prices within the economy still remain profoundly affected by the 2008 crash. The most prominent example I know of is the cost of what are called fine arts, such as paintings, sculpture, pottery, and fine antiques. Those markets are raw supply and demand, and so it doesn’t take much of a tweak to drastically lower prices. After 2008, people just stopped buying good antique furniture (such as in the Chippendale style). After all, you don’t need to spend $10,000 or $15,000 for a chest of drawers, when a perfectly equivalent piece, functionally, can be purchased for a few hundred dollars. The prices of good, formal antique furniture fell to between one-fifth and one-tenth of their former cost, and have stayed there.

Well, the Davises, of Worland, noticed this remarkable dip in prices and started looking closely at what they might suddenly be able to afford. It has long been part of my bucket list to someday own a good formal Chippendale chest of drawers with ogee feet. Now, I think I might be able to afford one. And that’s why I’m going to Philadelphia.

John Davis was raised in Worland, graduating from W. H. S. in 1961. John began practicing law here in 1973 and is mostly retired. He is the author of several books.