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We all have inherent biases about aesthetics (and lots of other things as well) which is a tough nut to crack when you are selling something that appeals to one half of a team--whether a married couple or groups of designers--it complicates the selling process as there is a stubbornness that needs to be confronted as nicely as possible. I see it most commonly when I am at a fair as one person comes on the booth and the other(s) hang back. Of course, this bias needs to be divined if it is to be understood and often, people don't really want to reveal that much of themselves as the conversation can become too personal or just too convoluted. The odd thing to me, however, is how anyone can dislike anything without, at the least, trying to understand it.
The dislike of anything, the negative bias, is something that I work to overcome in myself. The challenge of seeing something with fresh eyes is not really up to anyone but ourselves, an obvious statement, but one that bears examination. How is it possible to see something without any bias? It really isn't, but if you take the time to look closely at something, you give yourself the chance to understand it. I have a pair of Maison Jansen bookcases, for example, which are made of brass tubing with lacquered shelves. Most antique dealers wouldn't bother looking at such an item, but I ldid because I needed bookcases that were open and light in feel and not wood. What I did not know when I bought them was just how good they were--since the purchase, I have seen other Jansen bookcases, but none as good as these. The whys and wherefores show particular care and great quality--something I would not have seen without owning this pair. My bias, minor but there, against modern-ish furniture always needs re-examining.
But as a dealer in wooden furniture from the 17th-19th centuries, there is one term that reveals a negative bias even if used innocently or with ignorance or malevolence (that's hard to imagine but it may be true). "Brown furniture" is the term and as far as I know, it was first used by dealers to slander other dealers whose furniture always seemed to have the same color no matter when it was made or what timber it was made from. It is a rather succinct collective noun, I suppose, and dealers still use it all the time, but more as a part of their language of despair for the ignorance the term implies when coming from the mouths of the general public. When people in my booth at a show use it, I know that I have an uphill battle because a bias, no matter where it stems from, has been revealed..
Battling the bias about antique furniture might be a steep hill to climb. It's not a huge problem for me as I don't want everyone in the world to buy antique furniture--just the people that want it. Yes, I want to convince the reluctant spouse or design team members of the beauty of a great antique, but I know I won't win every time. The least I would like to do is to convince people that "brown" is an inadequate term to apply to antique furniture, but even then, that bias almost makes me laugh at this point in my career. If you can't see beauty, then you can't see it. However, since everyone on the planet needs some kind of furniture, you should learn what is out there--not just stick to one era, one fad, one style. Modernism may be wonderful but so are all the centuries of furniture that came before it--all of it is part of an everlasting learning curve, biases notwithstanding.
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