Reproduction Rights
November 1, 2002
If you love antiques, there comes a time when you decide that everything in your home doesn’t need to be genuinely old. Beautiful antiques are scarce and fragile, and it could take years to completely furnish your rooms, let alone find 10 matching dining chairs in good condition. And, by definition, antiques are not adapted to modern living. No Louis ever had an armoire designed to hold a TV; Henry VIII never slept on a king-size mattress.
Los Angeles furniture dealers have been at the forefront of the high-end reproduction business for several reasons: Fewer people move to the West Coast with family heirlooms, which means that they are usually furnishing a house from scratch; large new homes require larger-than-life furniture, which means more customizing; and dealers can tap into a vast regional pool of artisans able to re-create lacquerware, veneering or water gilding.
Rose Tarlow, Dennis & Leen, Gregorius/Pineo, Therien Studio Workshops and Quatrain are among the area’s top antiques dealers who also offer reproduction lines that are available in showrooms throughout the country, with selections ranging from tables and beds to chandeliers and accessories.
Rose Tarlow–Melrose House
In 1985, Rose Tarlow, a Los Angeles dealer in fine antiques, agreed to make some chairs for a client to complete an antique set. Today, the Rose Tarlow–Melrose House Collection includes hundreds of furniture, wallpaper and fabric designs, predominantly of French, English and Asian influence.
“What I’ve tried to do is not have everything be an exact copy,” says Tarlow, who also takes on interior design projects for a select clientele. “Many of my pieces are not really reproductions. Just because something was designed years ago doesn’t mean it’s a great design. Sometimes it needs something a little quirkier to make it interesting. Or the scale has to be changed. So I don’t call them reproductions, I call them adaptations—something that would have been done in that period. For example, I have a William Kent chair that has nothing to do with Kent, but maybe if he were alive, he would have liked it.”
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