Sebastopol's antique revival
Mid-century modern and later are the hottest tickets, but fans of Art Deco and Victoriana (or the merely idiosyncratic) can still get their fix
There was a time, back in the 1980s and 90s, when Sebastopol was one of the antique-ing capitals of the Bay Area. Antique stores dotted Gravenstein Highway between the freeway and Sebastopol. Many of those stores have closed now—victims of the dot com crash, the 2007 downturn, the pandemic and, perhaps most of all, the changing taste in home furnishings.
Several antique stores remain, however, and recently new ones have been opening up. There’s a mini-revival underway in the local antique market. This weekend, on Saturday, June 22, a new event—Antiques, Art, Wine—is being put on by the Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce to celebrate this resurgence.
Changing Tastes
One of the challenges of being an antique dealer is that tastes change over the generations—and if you’re not careful you can find yourself holding a warehouse full of Victoriana when the majority of buyers are looking for midcentury modern.
Mary Riley, manager of the Antique Society, believes changing tastes relate to what people grew up seeing in their parents’ and grandparents’ homes when they were children. She thinks antique shopping is deeply tied to a sense of nostalgia.
“Unless you had some sort of experience with any other era that you grew up with or experienced in some way, how would you know it, right—if you didn't have it within your family?” Riley said. “It's definitely a nostalgia for the time that you became familiar with it.”
Which would explain why Victorian furniture was so beloved by Baby Boomers and why younger buyers tend to prefer mid-century modern and later.
“To them, what is antique is what they grew up with in their households with their parents or grandparents, which would have been mid-century stuff,” she said.
The Antique Society, which has 20,000 square feet of floor space and 120 vendors, is owned by Angela and Bryan Vidinsky, who purchased it five years ago.
“We’ve been working to make sure that the store is offering something for everyone and bringing in young audiences wherever we can,” Angela said. “It's been fun to see the antique world kind of rebuilding itself with Rick’s opening up next door, Windmill turning over across the street, and Reese is really bringing new life to Ray’s Trading Company over there. Dwell is a new store, as well. So yeah, it feels like the whole area is really reviving and people are excited about it.”
Across the street, Rick Petteford owns Rick’s Antiques, Art and Mid-century. He took over what had been Food for Thought Antiques, but he’s been in the business for 30 years.
“The bulk of the floor space is mid-century furniture because that’s the type of thing that I sell a fair amount of in terms of furniture,” Petteford said, “but I do a lot of early California art, Native American basketry, Navajo rugs, and American Art Pottery. That’s an especially strong suit of mine because I made my living as a studio potter for 25 years.”
“I think mid-century, especially the Danish modern stuff, kind of fits with the aesthetic of the day,” he said. “It’s clean. It’s simple. It’s not a lot of gewgaws, and it's very functional. And generally speaking, the better stuff is really, really, really good furniture.”
“The ’50s, ’60s ’70s is more what’s going on right now,” he said. “The kitschy stuff from the 50s is sort of over the hill. But the more sleek, Danish modern and that sort of thing is still holding up fairly well,” he said.
When the antique market began contracting in the early aughts, Petteford said there was a shift toward collectives like the Antique Society, as dealers sought to get out from under the overhead costs of running their own business.
“Now there's a resurgence of single owner shops,” he said.
They’re being supported in part by newcomers to the area.
“There was a huge influx of people from San Francisco and elsewhere moving here during the pandemic,” he said. “I see a lot of people between maybe 30 and 45 that have decided to get out of the city and get up here. And a lot of those folks are the people that are buying furniture for their houses, of course.”
Angela Vidinsky said the large number of people needing to re-furnish newly built homes in the fire zone also boosted the local antique market.
She said that furnishing your house with antiques is ecologically wise as well as beautiful.
“One of the things I’m proudest of in owning this store is that it’s totally sustainable when you shop here,” she said. “You’re supporting local; you’re buying something that’s been pre-loved; you’re not harming the environment in any way. All of our pickers are out there shopping locally and doing the same thing and so it’s just a self-sustaining model for business,” she said.
Come to Antiques, Art, Wine on Saturday, June 22, 3-6 pm at participating antique stores in south Sebastopol.