Date:  January 10, 2008  |  

A trip to Wildwood Antiques in northeast Arkansas is no ordinary shopping excursion. Owner Katherine Wildy opens the doors of her own home for customers to browse her amazing selection of everything from furnishings and art to china, crystal and silver. She also gives them access to her breathtaking knowledge of antiques, relaying a separate, personal story for almost any item, including where it came from and its uses and variations.

Wildy, whose background before becoming an antiques dealer was in teaching English literature, is also a wonderful speaker and a lover of history, often presenting programs about antiques and their meanings for groups and clubs. On a recent visit, she spoke with me about the significance of flowers in all types of antiques and art, a subject she’s deeply interested in and has lectured about often.

To explain why she is passionate about antiques, Wildy quotes writer and literary critic Anatole Broyard, who describes old objects as being “twice touched, rubbed with reverence, tattered or dogeared with use, corroded with sentiment, caressed by time.” When those objects represent a plant or flower, this appreciation is only multiplied. “So much energy is required for the earth to produce a flower, and then in a few days it’s wilted,” Wildy says. “So when it’s reproduced in a painting or a piece of silver, the flower itself becomes twice touched.”

Though blooms are fleeting in the garden, they can live on for generations when represented on an antique, often symbolizing fertility, remembrance, celebration and the bounty of the earth. But they also have much deeper meanings. The rose in particular is a powerful symbol of joy and love, used in wedding china and linens, or of royalty, bereavement or perfection. “The many objects that roses appear on are tangible records that the flower is in the minds and hearts of man in his daily life,” says Wildy.

“Poets, artists and antiques dealers always plunder ideas from nature,” says Wildy, and she looks to William Faulkner to explore the attraction. Faulkner said, “The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means, and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.” This more than holds true for the artists who created the silver, glass, china and jewelry in Wildwood Antiques.

Flowers were reproduced on almost any item you would find on a well-dressed table, such as a Royal Doulton teacup and saucer and Tiffany Chrysanthemum salad set.

Flowers were reproduced on almost any item you would find on a well-dressed table, such as a Royal Doulton teacup and saucer and Tiffany Chrysanthemum salad set.

An extremely rare piece of Majolica pottery, this sardine box is signed by Georg Jones, the artist, and features a sculptured sardine handle atop a bed of bamboo leaves.