Tags: Furniture
By Marjorie Gorospe
QUEZON CITY, METRO MANILA– Selling antiques is more than a business for Bryan Quintana. It is a learning experience as he discovers the cultures and products of different countries.
Quintana, who has been running an antique shop for three years now, says the antique business demands wide knowledge on the products he sells.
“My Aunt Rebecca Quintana just passed this business to me when she left for the United States. And for me to market my products, I really have to know even the smallest details of the products to make the items more interesting to my clients,” Quintana says.
Some of the antique products Quintana sells at the SWAPMEET Antique Shop include a mother and child brass statue from Italy worth P18,000, shower chandeliers from Europe and Canada that range from P13,000 to P15,000, and also Napoli and Murano pieces from Italy.
Alongside the imported antique items, Quintana shares that he is also proud to showcase old furnitures made from narra, kamagong and molave.
He says local furniture made of old wood are in fact stronger than imported ones. Quintana shares that during the time of Typhoon Ondoy, some of items he was selling got washed out and damaged, but the local products remained intact.
Quintana has a Sto. Niño statue worth P25,000 that was carved from rare kamagong wood. He also sells wooden bookshelves, tables, display cabinets and and old sets of chairs.
He refuses to disclose how old his products are because there’s a certain standard for a product to be classified as antique. He says he explains to his customers that there is a difference between antique and just a simple old product.
“It needs certification from the experts to prove that an item is authentic because an item can only be considered antique if it has existed for over a century,” says Quintana, noting that some of his products have been sent to the University of the Philippines in Diliman for authentication.
“Most people would go here not really because of how old the products are, but because the products are ‘antique-looking.’ And the real collectors would know which one is real antique or not and I am always honest to tell that to my customers,” he says, adding that his store is often visited by local celebrities like Boy Abunda, Kris Aquino and former First Lady Imelda Marcos.
He says local wood products in antique shops are often sought after because of their quality, unlike products found in shopping malls that are mostly just laminated. In fact, some of his products are reproduced and customized with materials that came from an old house.
Buyer and antique enthusiast Liz dela Peña, who frequents Quintana’s shop, shares that she was there to pick up her ‘dulang‘ or a small wooden chair used during the Japanese era.
“I grew up in a house which has antiques. I also believe that these products are stronger,”Dela Peña says, adding that she has just started to collect more old wooden furnitures for her new apartment.
Quintana further adds that his antique shop continues to receive positive response from customers and that he continues to learn more about the products that he sells.
SWAPMEET Antique Shop is located at 124 Kamuning Road. You can get in touch with Mr. Quintana through landline at 413-8255 or via mobile at (0929)2883335.
(This article also appears on Yahoo! Philippines here)
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