Old...it's the new new

I love all things ancient.

Unintentionally, I cultivated my fascination with ancient things while in college. I simply kept taking the interesting courses and and lo and behold four years later I walked out of Boulder, Colorado with a degree in Anthropology.

No intent to dig.
No intent to teach.
No intent to collect data (at least in the career sense anyway).

In fact, I spent a lot of money on a college education that has done virtually nothing for my career path...but one that has seriously shaped the manner in which I look at objects in the world. I love objects with a history. A story. A meaning...and therefore, value.

The more surrounded I become with objects of mass production, the more I feel myself gravitating to objects that have been around for a while. Things that look a little rough around the edges. Things that have been around the block a few times. Things with some real live grit and life to them.

I dress almost exclusively in used clothing.

My most recent obsession is antique trade beads. African, Indonesian, Middle Eastern, Native American, European...beads that were really truly traded as gifts of power and a form of currency before we had coins and bills. Beads made of glass, horn, bone, tusk, teeth, clay, coral and stone. Beads that were artfully crafted by hand and assigned a value. Beads that today still carry value, and will continue to increase in value because we can never again make a trade bead that was made in Africa in the 1700s.

I used to gasp at price tags on antiques. I don't anymore. Now, I appreciate.

As container ships line up to pull into the port of Oakland, packed with shiny new chotchkies fresh from a factory in China, India, Vietnam...my appreciation for all things "old" deepens. I think old is the new new.
Bronwen