The Grand Antique Salon just opened in Kyiv, the first such event in Kyiv’s history and the history of the Ukrainian antique business. Gathering the most notable collectors in the country, it’s also attracting attention to the antique scene in this country.
One of my strongest memories from a trip to Krakow is of the numerous small shops selling antique stuff all around that city. I wanted to buy everything – a stylish old high-legged chair, a mirror in a bronze frame… Finally I bought a nice wooden trunk with leather straps for about 20 zlotys. It might not be valuable, but it certainly has the charm of an old, well-used item. At that time the Hay Market still existed on Vorovskovo here in Kyiv – a place where an ordinary person could easily pick up an early Soviet china figurine, a copper coffee pot or relics from World War II.

But this, probably the only one flea market in Kyiv, closed several years ago. There are quite a few antique shops in Kyiv (on Andriyivsky Uzviz, for example), but they exist for a small circle of collectors rather than for a wide audience. This means that the most rare and valuable things are in the hands of private collectors. I met with one of them, Fedir Zernetsky, who is today acknowledged to be the top dog on the local antique scene.
Fedir was brought up in a family of architects and artists, so he got used to seeing old, valuable objects around him. Today he has literally filled the space of his life with antiques, and when I enter his office it’s not like a museum but rather like a storehouse of old furniture. Tables are waiting to be restored, while other pieces are in use with things on them. He started his serious antique ‘affair’ (he prefers not to call it a business) in the early 1980s. “I was young and a graduate of the architecture faculty,” he explains. “Living in the centre of Kyiv I could see how many things were being thrown away. I could visit a condemned building and take whatever I liked for free.”
The Soviet regime told people to break with the bourgeois past and many people did as they were told, getting rid of their old furniture. For that reason Fedir today has the biggest collection of antique furniture around, one estimated at several million dollars. His Epoch auction house is one of the oldest in Ukraine, founded in the troubled 1990s. “I would put an announcement in the newspaper and travel around Kyiv and Ukraine buying antiques. I had dealers in Odessa, Kharkiv and many other towns.” Today the collections have all been snapped up and there is barely anything left in the hands of regular owners. One of the reasons for this is that it’s recently become fashionable to collect old things. The epidemic has thoroughly infected high society, starting from President Yushchenko and his collection of Trypillyan pots and extending to rich businessmen who simply want to show off that they can afford expensive things. Fedir says the situation is a bit distorted. “The market is artificially inflated because of the presence of people who don’t understand a thing about art or antiquities but have a lot of money. But these people tend to give up fast, as they lack the inner motivation to collect antiques.”

Trying to Fake It
“Antiques are my life,” Fedir says. He’s devoted his life to them, and his many years’ experience in the field lead him to speak with confidence: “Antique objects are the only real witnesses of history. You can’t deceive an object – it will always speak of the events, tastes and even ideas that circulated at a certain time.”
Sentiment aside, the market is the market and Fedir’s rules are strict: an antique is something older than 50 years; the older the item, the more it costs, but that’s not the only criterion. In order to be a real relic an item should be unique – old but mass-produced things are not as valuable.
One more factor that plays a role in establishing prices is an object’s era, says Fedir. “If a table is from the baroque epoch, that is, from the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, it has to have been created precisely at that time. But baroque-style pieces that were built later in the 18th and in the 19th centuries – that’s not the real baroque, but a copy.”
Another factor in price is an item’s genealogy: the same two tables might have different prices if one of them belonged to a notable person. In antique slang this is called ‘provenance’, and collectors sometimes raise the price of a piece by selling it to a celebrity collector. There also exist schemes to legitimate fake antique items. “People have come up with numerous dirty techniques. For example, they’ll organise an exhibition of some truly rare things alongside the fake. Then the organisers of the auction will contrive to have someone buy the fake, then publish several fake expertises and articles to pull the wool over the eyes of inexperienced collectors. And many such techniques work.”
Experts say a huge percentage of antiques in Ukraine are fake. Many of them were imported here from Russia in the presumption that Ukrainian collectors are less competent. “Workshops that produce phony antiques have been around since the 16th century,” says Fedir. “In Russia numerous masters making so-called ‘Empire style’ pieces were extant in the 19th century. They’re still at it even today and make highly professional-looking things.” We can presume that many Ukrainian collectors have bought fakes, but they’ll never admit that – in professional collector circles, getting fooled is the ultimate dishonour.
When Fedir is choosing an item to buy he trusts his own eye – he says there exists no more accurate apparatus. He’s been studying restoration work since he was young, his teacher being the prominent Ukrainian artist and antique restorer Valentin Reunov. He died nearly a year ago, but I was lucky enough to interview him in his workshop before he did. Reunov was called ‘Mr. Baroque’ among his friends because he mainly restored things from that era, and also because of his flamboyantly artistic manner. Almost every single item in his workshop was antique, even the oak spiral staircase leading to the second floor. He was never taught restoration officially, but he studied carefully the history of styles and applied to old photos or paintings for reference points. When I asked Reunov how he distinguishes a real antique from a simple old thing, he answered, smiling, “The way an ordinary person distinguishes a horse from a cow.” Reunov had a very small restoration workshop, consisting of only himself and several assistants, but they were all were devoted to the cause. After Reunov’s death, Fedir’s is the only professional restoration workshop around, claims Fedir. Nearly 15 masters work there, each in his narrow field: cabinet-makers, gilders, encrustation masters, etc. Fedir himself has been restoring things since he was a child and he remembers his school friends making fun of him. “’At which landfill did you find this piece of lumber?’ guys would ask when they visited my home,” says Fedir.

A Singer is Saved
In fact, the Ukrainian antique market is mostly illegal. The taxes for importing and exporting antiques are too high. Right now, bringing an item in from abroad and obtaining legal customs clearance will run you forty percent of the item’s cost. Starting this 1 January that fee will fall to 20 percent, but only for legally registered auction houses.
The same problems exist in exporting, which is why foreigners can’t afford to buy Ukrainian antiques. European countries have a completely different attitude towards antiques. Says Fedir, “Every self-respecting family has some family antiques. Every respectable hotel wants to furnish the lobby with valuable old things.”
My mother’s ancestors were quite wealthy and I still remember my grandmother telling me how the Soviets snatched the family silver in their struggle against the so-called ‘kurkuli’ – ‘bourgeois’ class enemies. By chance my great-grandmother managed to hide their Singer sewing machine, which is today considered the most precious thing in my family. Such exhibitions as the Grand Antique Salon, hopes Fedir, will help to change the societal perception of old antiques, bringing their beauty a little closer to people.
So I ask him: Isn’t he depriving people of their heritage by storing up all these antiques in his storehouse? “Every private collection will eventually turn into a museum,” he answers. “Antique collectors understand how short life is and I won’t take anything with me after my death.” At Ukrainian House he’ll exhibit one of the most valuable things from his collection – a Meissen china set from 1727. It is definitely worth seeing.

Kateryna Kyselyova