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Antique furniture is a popular area of antiques because furniture has obvious practical uses as well as collector value. Many collectors use antique furniture pieces in their homes, and care for them with the hope that the value of these items will remain same or appreciate.
The definition of the term is not always precise, and institutional definitions such as museum "Departments of Antiquities" often cover later periods, but in normal usage Gothic objects, for example, would not now be described as antiquities, though in 1700 they might well have been, as the cut-off date for antiquities has tended to retreat since the word was first found in English in 1513.
An artifact [a] or artefact (British English) is a general term for an item made or given shape by humans, such as a tool or a work of art, especially an object of archaeological interest. [1] In archaeology , the word has become a term of particular nuance; it is defined as an object recovered by archaeological endeavor, including cultural ...
Artifacts are often those that have been discovered and unearthed at archeological digs and then transported internationally through a middleman to often unsuspecting collectors, museums, antique dealers, and auction houses. [5] The antiquities trade is much more careful in recent years about establishing the provenance of cultural artifacts.
Archaeology stimulates interest in ancient objects, and people in search of artifacts or treasure cause damage to archaeological sites. The commercial and academic demand for artifacts contributes directly to the illicit antiquities trade. Smuggling of antiquities abroad to private collectors has caused great cultural and economic damage in ...
In archaeology and paleontology, the derived term provenience is used with a related but very particular meaning, to refer to the location (in modern research, recorded precisely in three dimensions) where an artifact or other ancient item was found. [3] Provenance covers an object's complete documented history. An artifact may thus have both a ...
In many European languages, the word antiquarian (or its equivalent) has shifted in modern times to refer to a person who either trades in or collects rare and ancient antiquarian books; or who trades in or collects antique objects more generally. In English, however, although the terms "antiquarian book" and "antiquarian bookseller" are widely ...
Antiques are collectable items at least 100 years old, while other collectables are arbitrarily recent. The word vintage describes relatively old collectables that are not yet antiques. Collecting is a childhood hobby for some people, but for others, it is a lifelong pursuit or something started in adulthood.