Yesteryear Antiques

In August of 1974, Yesteryear Antiques was moved to 63 Church Street, St James, where it has remained since. After school, he would visit his grandmother’s store. To him, it was like a playground and his interest in furniture was peaked.

At 17, he went to England to study “furniture design and building” at London Guildhall University and Rycotewood College. On his return, he had every intention to begin designing and building his own furniture. However, on speaking with various people in the business, he learnt of the problems associated with it. For example, a client would contract a piece of furniture, see the design but then go to someone with less skill and experience to build it more cheaply. Sometimes the client would agree to the design and the price but in the end refuse to pay. Ross decided he didn’t want to deal with these kinds of issues. While he tried to figure out what he wanted to do, he went to work for his grandmother in her shop and got to love it all over again. “Even though I’m working with something someone else has built, I have the chance to give it a new breath of life,” Ross said. “To take something that has lasted 100 years and restore it properly so that it can last another hundred — to me, it’s like trying to save an endangered species.”

Most of the furniture is made of wood and marble. One of the oldest pieces available is a side board that is 120 years old. Apart from furniture Yesteryear Antiques carries antique clocks, silverware, bottles, handmade dishes, lamps, chandeliers and more. There is even an old phonograph and a calculator the size of a typewriter. And they not only carry antiques but collectables as well.

The store has been around for such a long time that people are very familiar with it. Yesteryear Antiques buys, refurbishes, and sells antiques which are mostly local.

The store also locates items for its customers and can do reproductions, time permitting. The store also works with interior designers and clients with strange requests and can also help furnish show houses, and restaurants.

There are certain unfavourable things which have bothered Ross who has condemned the “Antiques Road Show” that airs on the cable station PBS. He believes it has affected the market negatively.

“Now the everyday person feels they can make a lot of money off of their old furniture and so tries to sell them for much more than they are worth. Also, people buy the furniture cheap not realising it will cost a lot of money to refurbish properly,” he said.

“There are many persons who simply slap a new coat of varnish on the piece and customers are willing to buy it but perfection is a high priority here so I can’t just do that. To repair something properly, nine out of ten times you need to take it apart. It may be necessary to change parts, check splits in the wood, and so much more. The problem is, unless people can see exactly where their money is going, they don’t want to pay for it but there are details the average person will not see that cost them.”

Another problem is that many people try to pass off “old” furniture as antiques. “Antique fraud is a big scam in Trinidad and Tobago now,” he explained. “People tend to reproduce the real thing and then try to sell you the copy but sometimes you can just look at it and see it’s a reproduction.

Maybe by the way it’s cut, the way it’s joined, or by the colour of the wood but sometimes you need to examine it closely to tell the difference.” In spite of everything, Ross relishes his job, despite the work not being glamorous, he enjoys the challenge and will continue to bring life to old furniture for as long as he can.