Paxton House is all about history and, of course, it is full of ‘old stuff’. For the first time, this year, we are hosting an antiques fair where dealers will come together to sell their wares – more old stuff – to you, the public. The first weekend antiques fair was really popular and we are expecting crowds to our second as well.  Why?  What is the appeal?

Visualising the Past

The ‘stuff’ that people used or treasured in earlier times gives us an unrivalled view into the past and buying antiques for yourself can bring a little of the past into your own home. Our visitors come to Paxton House for a whole wealth of reasons but one is because they can see antiques not just piled on stalls but left in situ, as if the family have just walked out. We are all drawn to this visual way of understanding how things worked in the past and, perhaps, imagining ourselves living in part centuries. It is fascinating to see how things have changed by viewing odd unfamiliar objects, like the cellarettes in the dining room where Ninian Home kept his wine in the 1770s, or the innovative waterwheel that lifted water from the Linn Burn up to the house for washing and baths.  At Paxton, it is easy to imagine Ninian and Penelope Home seated at the table entertaining their guests or picture Penelope rising from her bed in the morning to look out of the windows overlooking the river Tweed. Seeing the now antique objects they used helps us visualise these scenes and finding a unique object to buy at an antique stall can connect you to your forebears.

Changing Attitudes

History can seem distant and unobtainable – people didn’t always have the same attitudes in the past.  Few places bring you closer than Paxton House, where the unique collection of watercolour paintings of Ninian Home’s Caribbean sugar estates featuring enslaved people at work takes us straight into the uncomfortable history of slavery. The model ship in the Library, part of a fleet used to police the slave trade after abolition, is a symbol of changing attitudes in the next century. Our exhibition Caribbean Connections, Slavery & Paxton reflects our modern concern with the legacy slavery has left in the British Isles while our online tour Sugar and Slavery also explores the global connections of our Georgian past and makes sense of our colonial history for today’s more diverse visitors. An object from the past can often give you insight into the way people thought about the world in earlier times.

Quality and Style

In an age of mass production, perhaps antiques hold most appeal for the quality of their manufacture. The furnishing and decoration at Paxton House used materials of the best quality and was undertaken by the finest makers of the time. While this season’s antique fairs may not offer rare items like the furniture made by Thomas Chippendale’s workshop for Ninian Home, there will be items made of quality materials, hardwoods, silver and brass, showing a quality that is rare in the modern flatpack world. What’s more, it is good to feel that you own something that has not been replicated in a billion IKEA loving households around the world.

 The Pull of Nostalgia

Furnishing our homes with antiques is often inspired by nostalgia.  For a lost world, for a closer past, for a link with the family that went before us. Sometimes our visitors at Paxton House have a direct connection with the estate or with the family. Sometimes it is just that they visited as children or perhaps our wild woods connect families to nature at a time when it is under threat.  We feel nostalgic for past fashions and changing tastes and the mix of antique and vintage items at our antique fairs give everyone a chance to tell a few stories from their personal history.  Paxton House is an ideal environment to exercise a bit of nostalgia and the antiques fairs have given everyone a chance to take an antique or vintage object away with them and capture a bit of the past at home.

 Find out more about the Paxton House Antiques Fair from 16th to 18th August 2024.