CONSUMER ARTFUL ANTIQUING

SO YOU THINK you want to collect antiques. Intricate inlays and elaborate carvings make your eyes light up. The coquettish turn of a shapely cabriole spurs your interest. And the idea of buying well-crafted furniture whose value will continue to rise makes your blood race.

Well, Dallas has a deal for you. Or does it? That all depends on the people you talk to, what you are looking for, and, most importantly, how much you’re willing to pay.

Under its glittering glass skyline, Dallas harbors a plethora of establishments dubbed antique shops: leaning frame houses with dingy rooms piled high with dusty furniture, assorted junk, and an occasional bargain; slick emporiums where the gleam of polished wood is matched only by the gleam in the owners’ eyes and where old furniture and baubles are tastefully arranged, but priced to tease the pocketbook; and all points in between.

Within a 10-mile radius of downtown Dallas, prices leap from shop to shop. A recent stroll down Routh Street in the heart of the bustling McKinney Avenue antiquing district revealed similar gateleg tables at two shops -both oak, both from the mid-1800s, both in good condition. The biggest difference was the price tag: $1250 for one and $350 for the other.

Aside from the nagging fear of paying too much for a legitimate antique, there’s the additional worry of buying misrepresented furniture -of gritting your teeth and shelling out enough cash to finance a college education, only to discover much later that your gloriously carved and lacquered Queen Anne secretary was manufactured in Korea last fall.

The alternatives available to novice antique shoppers are confusing, if not overwhelming. Indeed, the road to happy antique collecting is littered with victims who failed to heed the single most important words in the business: Educate yourself.

“The best advice I can give is to arm yourself with knowledge,” says Dallas art and antique appraiser Susan Windels. “Read, take courses, and study the periods. Shop around and compare prices. Then find a good dealer who deals with the periods you like and stick with him.”

The first thing a novice exploring the market will find is the raging disagreement over what constitutes an antique. While purists insist on a cutoff date of 1830 (roughly the end of the Georgian era in England and the first groan of the Industrial Revolution), other observers are more lenient. For them, and for U.S. Customs’ purposes, anything more than 100 years old can be called antique.

Obviously, antiques in the first category are rarer, more expensive, and therefore more likely to be misrepresented. Says one local antiques expert: “The principle of caveat emptor certainly applies. I know of one shop in Dallas that misrepresents things. The policy of the shop, if the fraud is discovered, is to refund the money, so there’s never been any litigation against the shop or any serious questioning of ethics. And people continue to shop there again and again.”

“Most dealers work within a price framework of what they originally had to spend for a piece,” says Windels. “It’s reasonable to assume they charge at least three times what they spent.

“You can go into almost any shop and find things that are vastly underpriced. But then again, it’s rare to find things that are really old in the Dallas market.”

Herein lies the novice antique shopper’s most crucial choice: to invest in the original, top-notch, strictly authentic antiques or to buy pieces that are old, mellowed with age, but not antique. With a wave of the hand, purists dismiss such pieces as collectibles and curios, but nouveau antiques (like the Queen Anne furniture reproduced in Victoria’s England) do have a value on the market.

There’s no reason, of course, that you can’t purchase a few pieces of each genre. Educate your tastes to recognize and appreciate the fine antiques while you furnish your home with a well-chosen mélange of antiques and future collectibles. By saving the bulk of your money to purchase of-the-period antiques, you’ll be building – year by year, bit by bit -the nucleus of a valuable collection.

In other words, experts advise against entering the antique-buying arena merely as an investor. Rather, invest in good pieces because you like them and because you appreciate the tradition of craftsmanship they represent. As Windels says, There’s no reason you can’t collect both for enjoyment and as an investment. I personally collect only the things I like, and it’s irrelevant if someone else thinks what I own is good. It always amazes me when people allow their decorators or friends or antique dealers to dictate their tastes.”

Whether your interests lie in the rough-hewn beauty of American primitives or the gilt-edged elegance of Louis XIV, if you’re ready, willing, and able to spend the money for an of-the-period antique (and prices will indeed be steep-up into tens of thousands of dollars for rarer pieces), you should demand authenticity.

Upon purchase of an of-the-period antique, ask the dealer for a statement of authenticity that includes what the piece is, where it’s from, its circa date within 10 years, the price you paid, and the dealer’s signature. “If you’re paying that high a price,” says one area appraiser, “you want to be assured that you’re getting an original. On the other hand, if the dealer won’t give you a statement of authenticity, I wouldn’t buy the piece. Either he’s unethical or he has no confidence whatsoever in his antiques. Any ethical dealer will take back a piece if you’ve found a problem with the authenticity he’s guaranteed.”

On top of that, the dealer’s statement of authenticity serves as a signed statement of value for your records and insurance policies.

In general, shoppers browsing for antiques-of-the-period or otherwise-should keep in mind a number of key criteria that determine a piece’s importance and value.

Has any part, or the whole thing, been refinished? Refinishing diminishes the value, but sometimes it just can’t be helped. Early 18th-century walnut is so fragile and rare that the only furniture available outside museums has been touched up. Still, less is better.

Have the smaller elements been replaced? Remember, these pieces of furniture have been used in people’s homes and passed down for centuries. Drawer runners wear out; entire tabletops are damaged. Again, the better quality pieces are more nearly original.

Is the hardware original? In the Victorian era, the brass handles and hardware on grandmother’s 1800-vintage desks and bureaus were replaced, sadly, with the wooden knob styles of the day.

Are all the legs on an antique chair of that same period? The back legs of old pieces often wore out and were replaced. Make sure that each tabletop matches the hardware on its base. And if you’re buying a set of chairs, beware: AH may not be original, so check each before you buy.

-Does the dovetailing match on your highboy’s upper and lower sections? “Assembled” or “married” pieces, in which the top and bottom were originally mated with different pieces, are common.

Is the “japanning” authentic? Lacquered and japanned pieces were rarities even when they were brand new. Nowadays, originals are almost impossible to find, yet there’s a booming business in importing new “antiques” that have just been fabricated in the Orient. “You see these all over Dallas,” says one expert. “Some pieces are so new you can almost smell the paint. And the/re selling for between $20,000 and $30,000.”

Has the carving been added? Carved furniture is highly prized and consequently of greater monetary value to dealers. But many of the carved pieces currently on the market were engraved to enhance their value, years, even centuries, after they were crafted. If a table’s legs look skimpy, if the proportions aren’t quite right, don’t buy it.

– Does the piece feel old? We’re not talking patina alone; all the patina in the world won’t replace sheer age. Are the woods inside drawers and cabinets roughly hewn? Are edges softened with use? Is wooden hardware -nails, screws, and the like -used exclusively? Are the dovetail joints handmade? Does the wood’s surface indicate the kind of wear that the piece would logically be subjected to?

In general, labeling in Dallas’ antique shops offers little more than that most important bit of information: the price.

Think twice when you see furniture labeled Chippendale, Queen Anne, Hepple-white, and so on. You can find authentic Chippendales in the Dallas area, but more often, you’ll find antiques in the Chippendale style which don’t command the importance of an original and shouldn’t command near the price.

These days, even in a mecca of upward mobility like Dallas, fewer and fewer people are privileged to have the small fortune required to invest in major antiques. If you simply don’t have the money to spend on of-the-period antiques, don’t despair. Instead, consider amassing a collection of smaller items -baskets, brass, weather-vanes, quilts, tea caddies, china. Almost every shop has smaller items available, and they’re often good buys.

But if you’re interested in buying Vic-toriana, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and furniture dating from the turn of the century – the antiques of tomorrow at today’s prices -your best bet is to shop around.

By all means, take the obligatory stroll down McKinney and explore its environs. And in your wanderings, make note of the little shop filled with spray-painted “Victorian” wicker. Any shop that brazenly displays an “All Sales Final” sign deserves to be avoided like the plague.

Once you’ve poked in and around the beaten track, head south to the greener pastures of Oak Cliff, where antique shops are few but bargains are plentiful. Not only will you have a great panoramic view of the Dallas skyline when you return north on the Jefferson Street Bridge, but you’ll also find deals that leave some of the shops on McKinney in the dust.

Oak Cliffs shops are mostly simple, small mom-and-pop operations. Many are open only on weekends, so it’s wise to call before venturing across the Trinity. But you’ll know you’ve come to the right place when you walk through the door of The Browse Shop -two houses chock-full of old English furniture and collectibles. Or when you’re greeted at Jackie’s Now Then & When by Jackie Bollinger, whose husband Red will show you (and haggle over) every piece of furniture in the shop.

The proprietors of these shops, and others like them, will let you browse and poke around to your heart’s content without interference. Their furniture shines with daily polishings, and their collectibles include masses of ironstone and Depression glass. And although their furniture isn’t rare or unique or, by some standards, even antique, they’ve got the one thing Dallas’ mainstream dealers can’t touch: a price that’s right.

Following is a list of antique sources around the Dallas area- by no means a list of recommended dealers, but rather a compilation of places to get you started on a little comparison shopping.

Allen and Armstrong, 2712 Routh, 821-8271. 18th- and 19th-century French and English.

Another Time Antiques, 1218 Skillman, 826-0941. English and American since the turn of the century; glass and collectibles.

Bamberg Antiques, 236 W. Page, 948-7243. Collectibles.

Bear and Pear, 4539 Travis, 522-3641. Americana; rag rugs, folk art.

Bill Miller, 3709 McKinney, 528-6210. American, English, mostly since 1900.

The Browse Shop, 216 W. Yarmouth, 942-9767. Turn of the century English and American; curios, ironstone.

The China Cupboard, 3316 Knox, 528-6250. Discontinued china.

Dorrace Pearle, 2736 Routh, 827-1116. Collectibles; china, jewelry, silver.

Jackie’s Now Then and When. 112 S. Beckley, 942-0955. Mostly turn of the century and later English, some American.

Joe’s Antiques, 1702 Fort Worth Ave. 742-7608. Bits and pieces; oak furniture.

Manheim Galleries, 2520 Fairmount, 742-2364. English, Oriental, and Continental furnishings.

Milly McGehee Americana, 2918 Sale, 522-8162. Well-labeled Americana before 1830, antique accessories.

Rose Driver, 2916 Sale, 521-7012. 18th-and 19th-century English.

Sid’s Antiques, 306 S. Beckley, 941-6781. Furniture and collectibles.

Teasel Galleries, 2533 McKinney, 651-0600. 18th- and 19th-century French and English.

Victory Antiques. 2722 Routh, 824-0921. 18th- and 19th-century English and American.

Waldenwood, 3717 McKinney, 651-1732. Americana, much of it recent.

William Griffiths Antiques, Inc., 2913 Fairmount, 651-8861. 18th- and 19th-century English and American.