A Field Guide to Antique, Vintage & Pre-Loved

There are three kinds of pieces you’ll find in the Maison, and it is genuinely worth understanding the difference. Not because the rules matter for their own sake — but because once you know them, every shop, every auction, every drawer at your grandmother’s house begins to read like an open book.

An antique is, by international convention, an object that is at least one hundred years old. That is the rule customs officials use, the rule auction houses use, and the rule we use here.

But age alone does not make something an antique in the truest sense. What separates a real antique from an old object is provenance — its known history. A hallmark on the underside of a silver spoon. A maker’s stamp on a porcelain plate. A registry number on a piece of crystal. A line of ownership traceable back through estates and dealers and saleroom catalogues.

The antique pieces in the Maison have been sourced from dealers we know personally, from European auction houses, and occasionally from private collections — places where provenance is documented and condition is honestly disclosed. When we know the maker, the year, or the workshop, we say so. When we don’t, we say that too.

Antique pieces are priced accordingly. They are also, almost always, the only one of their kind we will ever have.

Vintage is the more flexible word — generally accepted to mean between twenty and one hundred years old. That covers a great deal of beautiful ground: Art Deco glassware, mid-century crystal, 1960s costume jewels, 1970s ceramics, 1980s silk scarves. Anything from your grandmother’s wedding china to a Lalique vase you found in a Marseille shop in the 1970s.

Vintage pieces are sourced differently from antiques. They tend to come from estate sales, country fairs, dusty shops on side streets, and the kind of family clearances where someone is finally letting go of a beautiful thing because no one in the next generation has space for it. Sometimes we find them ourselves on slow Saturday mornings. Sometimes a dealer calls because something has come in that we’d love.

Vintage rarely has the formal provenance of an antique — but it often has something just as valuable: a story, a maker’s mark from a known era, or the unmistakable craftsmanship of a decade that knew how to make beautiful things. And like antiques, every vintage piece is one-of-a-kind. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

Pre-loved is the youngest of the three — pieces that are less than twenty years old, but were beautiful enough the first time around to deserve a second life. A 2010 Hermès scarf in pristine condition. A barely-worn Chanel cuff. A hand-painted ceramic vase from a small atelier that has since closed. A leather-bound journal that someone bought, never used, and tucked away.

Most pre-loved pieces in the Maison come from auction houses in London and Paris — Christie’s, Bonhams, Drouot, Tajan, and the smaller houses that specialise in deceased estates and private consignments. Occasionally they come from trusted resellers and luxury consignment specialists who authenticate before listing.

Pre-loved pieces are not quite antiques, not quite vintage, but they are absolutely not second-hand. They have been authenticated, gently cleaned where appropriate, and chosen because they were beautiful then and remain beautiful now.

How to think about it

If a piece tells you about the world it came from — it is antique.

If a piece tells you about a particular era you can almost touch — it is vintage.

If a piece tells you about a beautiful thing that simply deserves another home — it is pre-loved.

All three live in the Maison. All three are chosen with the same care. The only difference is the kind of story they bring with them — and the price reflects which kind of story it is.

A small final note

Knowing the difference is not snobbery. It is literacy. The most beautifully educated women in any room are the ones who can pick up a fork, turn it over, glance at the hallmark, and tell you whether it is George III or Edwardian or Italian silver from the 1950s — and find each of them equally lovely, for entirely different reasons.

We hope this little page becomes the start of that kind of looking, for you.

— Giulia