Before household furnishings were generally mass-produced and mass-transported, there were specialized annual markets and people traveled long distances to queue up to see the latest goods. It suited the established townships to keep this system and they kept people from marketing new items at other locations and at other times in the year. Though it was the men who did most of the line-standing, it was the women who led the eventual revolt, and thereby brought together the spark of industrialism and the bone dry tinder of romantic individualism. By selling and purchasing used wares, people could avoid the lines, reject the hegemony, and eventually create a underground sales in the prohibited new wares by cleverly decorating them to appear old. Though the original political and economic meanings have been forgotten, the antiques movement still hints of people who refuse the queues and enjoy trying to tell the fake from the real.
And that's where we get the word Anti ques. (Yes, I am only kidding. This is all nonsense I made up for that dumb joke. I feel a little silly a lot lately, certainly since I joined the whim writers and gave myself up to whimsy.)
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