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Antiques

Welcome to drummondread.com the online world of antiques and collectables.

Collecting antiques has become a very popular pastime for a great many of the population and antiques programmes on the television such as the BBC's Antiques Roadshow, Going For a Song as well as more recently Flog It have increased the profile of antiques.

Antiques collecting and dealing is not a recent phenomenon, and in one form or another antiques have been collected and sold by antiques dealers since the time of the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644) in China. During this period the Chinese upper and middle classes became fascinated with collecting antique ceramics and bronzes from the Tang (A.D. 618-907) and Sung Dynasties (A.D. 960-1279) and a thriving market for antiques dealers to exploit, evolved. Even to a point where these antiques would commission artisans of the day to produce fakes of these antiques to sell to the antiques collectors of the Ming Dynasty. So today it is possible to purchase an antique Ming bronze that is a fake of an antique Tang bronze. Not a fake antique but an antique fake as such. So it is not just in today's antiques world that dubious antiques dealers have tried to dupe the antiques buying public into buying fake antiques.

In Europe antique collecting can see it's beginnings in ancient Rome. The Roman's coveted ancient Greek sculpture and these were the antiques of that era. Although they are now thought of as antiquities at the time they were the equivalent of the antiques of today. Antiques dealers must have existed at this time and much antique Greek sculpture still resides in Rome today.

Since the 17th and 18th centuries onwards European nobility undertook a Grand Tour of Italy and Greece to enhance their education by the study of ancient Rome and Greece, as well as the Renaissance. Part of this tour involved purchases of antiquities and antiques produced during the Renaissance. Furniture, tapestries and glassware produced during the Renaissance were the antiques of the day and are still some of the most desired antiques of today. Many British country houses have some of the finest collections of antiques from the Renaissance, most of which were purchased during the educational and antiques hunting trips of the Grand Tour.

More recently antiques have become accessible to a much wider audience, and every small town in Britain now has an antiques shop or market. The antiques world is an ever changing market and antiques dealers and auction houses have learned to adapt and even create new antiques collectors areas, where previously none existed. For example during the 50's and 60's no antiques dealer would have considered Clarice Cliff ceramics as an antique, but now her designs are some of the most sought after in the antiques world.

In the 20's and 30's antiques dealers considered most Victorian art and chattels as just second-hand goods and only thought of the highest quality products of the 17th and 18th centuries as antiques.

Antiques are now sold via antiques websites with specialist areas of antiques being targeted by specific collectors. Therefore, new antique markets are being developed by antiques collectors searching these specialist antique based websites.

The antiques world is an ever changing market which has meant antiques collectors and antiques dealers have had to adapt to new trends and fashions and with advent of the World Wide Web antiques have become a truly global phenomenon.