I was told once by an antique dealer that the more unusual and rare an item was, the more you should suspect whether it was an antique or an inspired reproduction. I would like to think that there are some rules in the antique furniture business, but there aren’t. This rule, like all the others, is a rule of thumb., something to go by when you are in a pinch and is certainly not an absolute.
What is true in the antiques business is that if you come upon something extremely unusual, it is likely to have a great many detractors among your competitors. There is a herd mentality in the business, probably in all businesses for that matter, that finds it difficult to accept the unique. Unique objects were, of course, made, just as pieces have been altered and re-made. The antiques world has a very hard time with these pieces.
The concept of unique is unsettling. It throws the rule of thumb out of whack. I’ll never forget coming upon a cove on Lake Cayuga that had many thousands of geese resting in it. They were all facing the same way and you could sense that the safety of the species depended on their massing together. But our instincts to amass ourselves in thought and deed can’t always be right. Otherwise there wouldn’t be hermits.