Antique Mecca Draws Latin Americans to Argentina’s Capital

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – Raúl Piccioni walks attentively through the stalls at the Feria de San Pedro Telmo in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina.  

The renowned antique fair takes place every Sunday in San Telmo, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. Antique shops surround the outdoor fair in Plaza Dorrego, making this area a mecca for antiques and collectibles.

With the eye of a hawk, Piccioni scrutinizes each stall at the fair for fake antiques. Every now and then, he touches an object just barely or asks the vendor a vague question. Just one expert glance is enough for him to determine the age and authenticity of the items on sale.

Piccioni, a historian with an art history degree, has worked at the fair as an inspector for 30 years. But few vendors know who he is. Only a handful are aware that he works for the Museo de la Ciudad, a museum funded by the city government that organizes and regulates the fair.

Piccioni’s daily work at the city museum consists of researching for its antiques displays. But one Sunday a month, he inspects the fair, transforming into a hidden investigator. He must pass through the fair as imperceptibly as possible in order to catch any vendors selling fake antiques.  

“If they know me,” Piccioni says, “they remove the fake things when they see me pass, and so, it is no use. Doing these inspections is a form of preserving the fair and avoiding that it is distorted.”

If he discovers any counterfeit items, he advises the museum to sanction the vendors. If vendors sell fake antiques more than once, the museum boots them from the prestigious fair.

The Feria de San Pedro Telmo and the antique shops that surround it constitute an antique mecca in Buenos Aires, attracting tourists from across Latin America who admire items they cannot find in their countries. Buyers seek antiques for various reasons, from sentimental to economic. Old items gain antique status for their history and design, with many objects arriving at the fair after the death of their former owners. Antique dealers and experts say recognizing antiques is a skill that requires experience and passion.

The Feria de San Pedro Telmo, known to locals as the Feria de Antigüedades de San Pedro Telmo, occurs on Sundays in Plaza Dorrego. In the adjoining streets is the larger Feria Paseo Humberto I, which draws various types of vendors and consumers on weekends and holidays.

José María Peña, who eventually served as director of the Museo de la Ciudad, created the antique fair in 1970. Peña’s objective was to revalue San Telmo, a marginalized neighborhood at the time, Piccioni says.

After the inception of the fair, the traditional antique shops that existed in other neighborhoods moved to Plaza Dorrego in San Telmo. New businesses also emerged, helping to create a specialized zone for antique sales and to revitalize the neighborhood. Today, there are about five antique dealers per block in the area around the plaza.

The Feria de San Pedro Telmo features 270 stalls. To obtain a stall, vendors have to wait for another vendor to die or to incur sanctions for selling fake antiques. When that happens, the Museo de la Ciudad raffles off the vacant stalls to applicants.

Every Sunday, the fair receives approximately 10,000 visitors, according to the Museo de la Ciudad. Many are tourists.

Tourism agencies include Plaza Dorrego and the Feria de San Pedro Telmo in the city tours that they offer. Antique vendors say they draw customers from various countries.

Hugo Breitman owns HB ANTIQUES, one of the antique shops surrounding the fair. Foreigners travel specifically to Argentina in search of antiques, he says.

“The majority of the clients are foreigners,” he says. “Argentina is the only country in America, excluding the United States, where there are so many French objects from the 19th and 20th century.”

During those centuries, Argentina was a rich country, Breitman says. Wealthy families toured Europe looking for furniture for their homes. There was such an affinity for European furniture that European department stores opened branches in Argentina during that period.

Juana Ringeling, a Chilean artist, says she always reserves time to tour the antique fair when she travels to Argentina because her home country does not have one like it.

“I came to Argentina for work,” she says, “and Sunday, I saved it to come here.”

Andrea Mindreau, who is from Peru, says she likes to explore San Telmo in order to marvel at the objects she finds in the fair and the surrounding antique shops.

“I like that there are a lot of curious things,” she says, “a lot of unique things and a lot of life.”

Although there are antique shops in Peru, there are not as many as in Argentina, Mindreau says. The items are also distinct in Argentina.

“Here, they have a more European style,” she says.

Consumers cite various reasons for buying antiques.

Ringeling purchases antique buttons to make jewelry and bridal crowns to sell. But beyond the items’ commercial use, the history that the objects hide also attracts her.

“What I like about antiques is the history that there is behind each object,” she says. “I like to use them so they stay current.”

Mindreau aims to find objects that appeal to her aesthetically.

“I do not look for anything in particular,” she says. “I like to buy details, things that I use to dress myself, to decorate the house or to give as gifts.”

Some Argentines also frequent the fair to make everyday purchases. Marta Hernández, 73, has known about the fair since its inception and comes to buy specific things from its stalls.

“Today, I came specifically to the fair to buy buttons,” she says. “I like to buy them here. You see unique things, and the prices are good.”

One stall in the fair specializes in the sale of old buttons and offers promotions featuring 10 buttons for 10 Argentine pesos ($1.85), Hernández says.

Piccioni even has purchased a few art deco vases from the fair to decorate his house. He also has bought other things he calls useless, such as a pen, for sentimental reasons.

“There is something nostalgic in the antiques too,” Piccioni says. “There are objects that are not very useful but that one once had and buys them for that memory. It happens a lot with toys.”

The antique shops deal in more expensive items. The motivations to buy them vary. When it comes to buying furniture from antique shops, for example, the reasons include the historical, aesthetic, sentimental, economic and social.

Breitman says that the reason to buy the expensive works of art at antique shops now is similiar to the reason people originally purchased them in the past: the ostentation.

“The good pieces, the upper classes always had them,” Breitman says. “Currently, it is the same. Whoever buys them must have a certain purchasing power to be able to have them and to show them.”

Some buyers use the pieces for decoration, Breitman says. Other items are collectibles, and others are an investment.

Rosana Karl, who sells collectibles such as old tins, razors and small toys at her stall at the fair, traces the life path of antiques.

Most were once lying in attics or storage rooms of large houses, she says. When the owners of those houses die, their successors often sell the property and give away or sell the items left in the house.

Vendors sometimes have to search for particular objects that are in demand among antique buyers, Karl says. To do this, they rummage through fairs in other neighborhoods, where they can sometimes find antiques.

Breitman says luxury antiques appear in the market when heirs to large family houses relocate to small apartments and sell the house’s contents.

Even though all objects must be old to be antiques, age alone does not make an object an antique, Piccioni says. Its design and history are also factors. Antiques can range from the most exquisite works of art to the most simple packet of matches.

Objects in the fair belonged to the middle classes or lower classes and were items that people used in their daily lives, Piccioni says. They reflect the history and life of the city, which is why they are similiar to the items the Museo de la Ciudad also collects, such as historical documents, through donations from residents.

“What people saved and what quantity there is of those objects are data that we have,” Piccioni says, “testimonies that arrived about how the daily life of the city was.”

On the other hand, the antique shops sell the more ostentatious items that give the impression that the former owners had a lot of money.

Identifying antiques takes experience.

“There is not a book that teaches about antiques,” Breitman says. “What is most important is the flight time, the hours of having seen the merchandise.”

Breitman says his father was an antiques dealer, and he began helping him when he was 13. He then began a career in medicine but soon decided to abandon it to devote himself to the field he was passionate about: antiques.

Piccioni agrees that his experience is what permits him to distinguish a genuine object from a false one.

“For example, with the necklaces, the brooch is what distinguishes them,” he says. “It is difficult to explain that. It is the eye. There are things – craftsmanship, brilliance – that tell you that an object is original. You achieve that with experience.”

Karl also agrees that you learn with practice.

“You learn with time,” she says. “It is a kind of personal search. Books about collectibles exist, but they do not give you tips to be mindful of. They show what were the brands and products.”

Karl also learns through the passion for what she does, she says. For her, the field is a vocation and a pleasure.

“The search, cleaning the things and making them beautiful so they are in the stall is an act of love toward the objects,” she says.

Interviews were translated from Spanish.