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| Antique roadshow | |||||||
| By: Hong Nhung | Published:2008-04-11 09:29:20 | ||||||
The more experience you have buying antiques, the more easily you’ll be able to recognise the authentic items, but where does a beginner start? |
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| A place of rare finds and hidden gems, for years antique collectors merely whispered the name Le Cong Kieu street for fear that the secret would get out. A two-minute walk from the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Art Museum or Ben Thanh market, the street is merely a joint that links Nam Ky Khoi Nghia and Pho Duc Chinh streets. Lining both sides of the short street are about 40 stores, which are brimming with a host of antiques as well as replica items. Opposed to booming world of consumerism around it, Le Cong Kieu street humbly hides behind the sandy stone statues, brass lamps, ceramic pots and dust covered clocks. I point at a bronze drum with Dong Son-styled patterns on it and the smartly dressed salesman replies, “$10,000 and another thousand if you want us to ship it overseas.” If it is an authentic Dong Son era drum then it is probably 2,000 years old. When I hint that I know the Vietnamese government does not allow antique items to be exported overseas he says curtly, “You have my guarantee.” “But how do I know this is a real antique? Do you have papers to prove it?” I ask innocently. “If you know antiques, then you know this drum’s value,” he replies testily. “We do not have papers for antiques, you have to tell by your experience.” There’s a large full stop at the end of the sentence, so I nod and edge away. Perhaps I can find another antique dealer who fields questions from amateurs. Marvelous miscellany None of the stores on the street seem to display their stock with any kind of discernible order. There is no separate area for genuine antiques or reproductions. No detailed labels. You must rely on your own ability to be able to examine and identify antiques. Unless you have built up a relationship with the shop owners, you will be most likely left to fumble around and learn by trial and error. “You should never buy expensive antique items on Le Cong Kieu street unless you are super-confident about the piece or know the seller extremely well,” says Hoang Dung, a seasoned lamp collector who lives in Ho Chi Minh City. Sellers on the street like to joke that Hilary Clinton mistook a replica Chinese ceramic item in a store on Le Cong Kieu street as the real deal and bought it as a souvenir when she visited the city back in 2000. “Only around 10 to 15 per cent of goods on display in Le Cong Kieu street are genuine antiques,” claims Hoang Dung. “The rest are supplied by reproduction manufacturers from Bat Trang, Binh Dinh, Danang, Long An, Ho Chi Minh City or China.” Digging through the piles in each store you can stumble upon all sorts of odds and ends – old coins, personal photographs, ceramic pots, bronze items, early-twentieth century gramophones, charming colonial style ceiling lamps or Grandfather clocks. A few sellers proudly claim that they have in their possession a few items of Chu Dau chinaware which were salvaged from a shipwreck off the coast of Ninh Thuan province. But once again you have to know your stuff. A well-known Ho Chi Minh City-based ceramics factory has been producing a lot of Chu Dau styled-products over the last few years. “It depends on your judgment whether or not an item is an antique or not,” says Lien, a shop owner, whose stocks she candidly admits are mostly imitations. “But I always let my customers know what they are buying. Some would rather pay less for a nice looking replica than fork out a fortune for the real thing.” Lien’s approach as a salesperson makes me feel much more at ease. She is patient and happily answers my various questions while making casual small talk as I nose around the store. She picks up a clean polished ceramic dish and another more aged item which as if to prove it’s been to the bottom of the ocean floors and back, has a seashell still attached to it. But actually the more polished item is the authentic 300-year-old dish while the other one is in fact an imitation. “After making the imitation, the dish was actually put into salt water so it would age as if it were fished out from a shipwreck,” she explains. Of course, if Lien informs the customer it is merely a craftily designed replica, you can’t accuse her of deception. An old hand A few veteran antique collectors will remember the good old days of Le Cong Kieu street. “It was famous for handicrafts and antiques even before 1975,” says Le Duy, an antique collector who lived on the street as a kid. He recalls seeing his uncle examining the “piles of rubbish” brought to his family’s store from random strangers. “People had to sell their heirlooms or their family’s furniture for cash,” says Duy. “Sometimes my uncles would be offered stolen stuff, but he’d never buy them as he thought it would bring him bad luck.” When Duy’s family moved out of the street during 1980s he tried to find a “more practical job” but he has never left the world of antiques. As a result he has kept coming back to Le Cong Kieu street and has started his very own collection. “A beautiful ancient art work is like a magnet to me,” he says. “I feel like I can understand it clearly. I can talk to it without making any conversation. There is a connection between the object’s soul and my soul.” However thanks to his lifetime experience Duy is lucky enough to be able to identify the true antiques. The rest of us end up fumbling around in the dust. |
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