The Collector profile has changed, the collector does not collect his favourite item or period style anymore.
The collector buys, invest and capitalise well in different styles.
Some twenty-five years ago - not a century ago- collectors were often monothematic, compulsive and obsessive; if they were buying glasses they knew everything about it; studying glasses would be a way to take possession of the purchases, finding information to add to the objects was part of owning.
When he depleted the subject, the collector began to sell all the glasses without stem and buy those with it, then those with the stem and red and sell the others and so on. This made the trade work.
The collector was the closest ally of the antique dealers and auction houses, was an expert himself. Not a few of them turned out as art experts, dealers or consultants, and a very good one, in a second working life.
Today this character is rare.
The market has diverged between brocantage and museum objects, relegating to the first group more or less everything that made our parents and grandparents happy.
“Museum” colleting items have intrinsic quality, a certain period-time, certified – better if aristocratic - provenance, and whether they are Italian the exportation permit. This makes them a good investment.
The collector in 2000 A.D. it is no longer a compulsive over-buyer. He’s more healthy and more attentive, but is not so deep in the subject, reads the cataloguing and that is enough.
Invests in precious and certain pieces: for the antique these would be an English table with armchairs, two or three Italian paintings of the Eighteenth century preferably Venetian or Neapolitan, a French large gilded mirror, a Maggiolini piece of furniture, and some pieces of porcelain or bronze sculpture if they are highly educated.
The contemporary paintings take up most of the liquid assets; no junk: a few selected pieces that decorate the salon or dining room. Nothing is hidden jealously in the studio or bedroom drawers.
I knew a collector of ceramics who secretly bought pieces and hid them from his wife taking out a piece every six months or so: he had with his pieces a loving relationship.
Today collector is healthier, but this love is gone.
