 |
Antiques Shopping
Sarah Gilbert January 22, 2007PAGES: 1 2
Still, antiques shopping isn't just about the acquisition of items. Flea markets and secondhand stores can also offer an unguided tour through a city's or a people's history.
Article Controls
"At a port you will see the sorts of items that were traded there in the past, as well as locally made goods. Holland is a perfect example of this. From early in the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company imported Chinese ceramics, which in turn inspired potters in the town of Delft to create their blue-and-white wares."
See our slideshow of the best vintage and antique shopping worldwide.
So where do the hard-core hunters go? There are countless stores and markets around the globe to shop for remnants of the past, of course, and each carries a bit of its city's history. Damascus was a major stop on the Silk Road, its merchants trading in swords, carpets, handcrafts and religious icons. And in Rome's Porta Portese Market, there are still plenty of secondhand Madonnas to go around. You may even stumble onto a historical find -- in 2000 the market turned up some typed summaries of World War II radio reports proving that Pope Pius 12th knew quite well what the Nazis were inflicting on the Jews.
London is still the perennial place to go for antique dolls and toys, as well as nautical antiques like toy pond boats and ships in bottles, while Sydney has several stores specializing in Asian antiques and Chinese communist kitsch. Argentina's heyday saw the landed gentry importing cartloads of loot from the best European manufacturers, but after countless economic crises, it's now loaded up in the antique stores of San Telmo.
Thailand's Chiang Mai is the epicentre of the Southeast Asian furniture trade. The region's furniture-makers have adapted to the 1989 ban on teakwood logging by restoring reconditioning items from China -- reconditioned teak chests and bed frames there sell at less than a third of the price they'd fetch in the US or Europe, and you'll also find ornately carved Indian doors and British colonial-era furniture.
While Paris' Clignancourt market is still one of the world's best antique markets, it's worth heading to the north of France for La Braderie. Not so much a market as bacchanal of trash and treasure, the annual event termed "Europe's second biggest after Oktoberfest" sees around two million shoppers descend on the city of Lille on the first weekend of September.
The Anglo- and Francophilia of New York's upper classes has ensured that you can find just about anything in the Big Apple's antiques stores, but some shops are worth a special look for their antique maps, prints and books. The Old Print Shop stocks maps and prints and specializes in Audubon prints. The Argosy Bookstore has seven floors' worth of antiquarian books and modern first editions, while The Complete Traveler Antiquarian Bookstore houses the world's largest Baedeker selection.
And sometimes a single store is enough to bring the vintage pilgrims flocking. Vintage clothing store C. Madeleine's of Miami is one such emporium. Lenny Kravitz is a fan, and Sex in the City stylist Patricia Field was known to trawl the aisles looking for Carrie's latest trend-setting style maneuver.
Whether you're a collector or just a souvenir hunter, here are some of the best spots around the world for vintage shopping discoveries.
See our slideshow of the best vintage and antique shopping spots around the world.
PAGES: 1 2
