During the first month or so of the lockdown we spent a lot of time working on smalls. Smalls in the antique world is just about anything that will fit in a china cabinet. Examples of smalls include: china, glass & crystal, silver, figurines, copper, brass, pewter, wood carvings, toys, cast iron, etc..
If you’ve ever been to The Barn you are aware that we have dozens of china cabinets, curio cabinets, and display cabinets, dedicated to smalls. Currently there are 41 cabinets full of smalls at The Barn. That number changes from time to time. We try to keep extra cabinets on hand, so we can just transfer the smalls when we sell a cabinet. But sometimes we over sell china cabinets and run out of room for smalls. That happened earlier this year, we had a run of a couple of months where it seemed like nearly everyday someone wanted to buy a china cabinet. But we’ve since acquired a supply of new cabinets and we are in good shape again.
We try and keep the cabinets full. We always have an extra supply of inventory. However, it take a great deal of time to sort through, and price, and often clean all the new arrivals. When we get busy for an extended period of time, smalls are the thing we tend to neglect. We were busy for such an extended period before the lockdown that we had lots of space in the cabinets. So, during lockdown we’ve been getting ahead of smalls. We started by filling up all our cabinets. Then when we ran out of space we started sorting, pricing, and repacking. This way we will have lots of replacements ready in advance of reopening.
We’ve been using the top of a Victorian dinning table to sort items. I would occasionally take a quick photo. I’ve attached three to this update.
