Love of antiques

Andrew Mathieson
BIG BOYS’ toys for the Rosenbergs have been antiques even when father and son were both still little boys.
Collecting big bearskins was an audacious start for John, now 69, Geelong’s most established antique dealer.
“I was riding my bike home with its head and all over the handle bars – I must have looked a scream,” he laughs.
“I’d put that in my bedroom and my mother hated it because she was scared everytime she came in.”
She never understood John and was later heard to utter: “There’s something wrong with that kid – all he wants is all that old rubbish.”
He was born on the wrong side of the war, antiques replaced toys when money was tight.
As a 12-year-old John was already selling collectables in a Geelong West antique shopfront window, passing on a 10 per cent commission.
Visiting Curleys auctioneers straight after school gave him the eye for detail.
The East Geelong boy first saw some value in a teapot stand dating from 1755 and paid just a shilling back then at an op shop.
“I beg to differ on that,” his son Paul interrupts, “that’s a saucer.”
Paul then laughs: “We’ll have to debate that.”
Dad cringes a bit and stares back.
“It’s a teapot stand, Paul – it’s completely flat,” John responds before grinning, “Hey, don’t tell your father how to suck eggs.”
For the 34-year-old son, swapping video games and footballs for all things old as a boy was unremarkable.
“They were my toys too,” Paul says.
“I just didn’t know any different.”
He even paid big bucks to spend a year at Christie’s auction house in London.
John insists antique collectors have little say in the matter.
“There’s a disease called chinamania, and if you’ve got it, there’s no cure,” he adds.
There are more than 7000 antiques in their massive Ryrie Street shop – as well as countless collectables that are less than 100 years old and considered more junk than antiques.
Among most of the prized pieces is the largest antique ceramics collection in Australia, and arguably in the world, John suggests.
Another 3000 antiques sit in their priceless reference collection.
Most pieces are more than 500 years old, but some, such as items from the Ming dynasty, are closer to 1000.
Others even stretch back thousands of years.
Inside, the antiquity section is something to behold.
“We have fragments up to 9000 years old,” John, pointing to them, says, “Lot of these, though, are 6000 years old.”
The oldest item is from the Sahara Desert and can fit in the palm of a hand.
Another favourite is a tiny lamp that is about 6500 years old.
Most were retrieved from returning Australian soldiers in the “shade of the pyramids”.
“The oldest things are often some of the cheapest,” Paul remarks.
“We have 6000-year-old pots that are $350.”
And not everything goes up in price.
Victorian period furniture that sold for $1200 two decades ago has fallen from favour and now gets about $300.
John shows off remnants from the Pompeii ashes in 79 AD that were pulled out of the ruins.
Paul jousts verbally with his dad.
“How did it get to Australia and out of Pompeii?” he wryly questions.
“Um, maybe we don’t want publicity on that.”
Dating the antiques is tough, even for seasoned antique dealers.
Shipwrecks are the easiest to narrow down from the year they are found.
They liken their jobs to playing a detective.
“It is like Sherlock Holmes,” Paul smiles.
“You add up all the clues and, if the positives outweigh the negatives, you can end up attributing it.”
John then butts in, “And sometimes the experts get it quite wrong.”
Paul studied archaeology and specialises in tribal artefacts and ancient fossils.
He interrupts the conversation with the banging on a New Guinea drum.
“The reason why I did the antiquities is because you and mum had the 18th and 19th century cornered,” Paul tells his dad, “I didn’t have a hope.”