In Search of ‘Shabby Chic’ at the Braderie de Lille

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/arts/design/braderie-de-lille-antiques.html

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LILLE, France — A tarnished brass-and-crystal chandelier here, a flaking gilded-wood mirror there. A sideboard with rococo curves and a chipped tureen on top.

They’re all part of the look. And though the terminology might have varied — “shabby chic,” “country chic,” “French farmhouse,” call it what you will — it’s a look that has, to varying degrees, exerted an unmistakable influence over interior decoration for more than 30 years.

But where is the best place to source pieces with that aura of charming Gallic scruffiness? One candidate would be the annual two-day Braderie flea market in Lille, France, the latest iteration of which ended on Sunday. The market has a long-held reputation for being a clearing house of affordable and authentic shabby chic.

“It’s the most amount of merchandise I can access in one trip,” said Mary Homer, a dealer from Pennsylvania, on Saturday as she inspected a 23-euro (about $27) coffee pot at a pitch specializing in vintage enameled kitchenware.

“People really like the old chippy stuff, the true old pieces,” said Ms. Homer, who was on her third visit to the Braderie. As of Saturday, she had bought about 60 items, including a 200-year-old painted clock dial, priced at €50. Ms. Homer added that in the United States, the “farmhouse” look was still “huge,” as was the more eclectic “Fixer Upper” style popularized by the HGTV stars Joanna and Chip Gaines.

Dating to the Middle Ages, the Braderie de Lille is one of Europe’s biggest flea markets. Every year, on the first weekend in September, an estimated 2 million people descend on the northern French city to wander through streets lined with bric-a-brac, have a drink in a cafe or bar, eat the local specialty of mussels and fries, and generally have a good time.

Open-air markets, like bricks-and-mortar stores, face formidable competition from online platforms such as eBay and Instagram as places to sell lower-value collectibles. And while the Braderie might still be an enjoyable place to buy a vintage watering can, reading lamp, table football game or stuffed and mounted duck, it is now rarely visited by higher-end antique dealers hoping to make discoveries.

The Braderie now faces other challenges. The 2016 event was canceled, after the deadly truck attack in Nice, in southern France that July. As was the case last year, new antiterrorism measures required that concrete barriers be placed around the center of Lille for the 2018 event, restricting vehicle access. And about 3,000 police officers were deployed.

The character of the Braderie has also changed, creating mixed feelings among long-term professional exhibitors and visitors.

“There’s less interest in antiques, and the quality is lower,” said Benoît Viriot, a dealer in Braderie staples such as old French mirrors and ironwork, who has been exhibiting at the event for 25 years. “The clientele is more international,” he added. “It’s still a good market.”

In the 1980s and ’90s, the Braderie had a reputation for being a market where centuries-old bargains could be discovered, freshly unearthed by locals from their attics. But on Saturday and Sunday this year, the streets reserved for “commerçants riverains,” or “resident traders,” were lined with T-shirts, sneakers and fast-food stalls, not grand-mère’s prized Sèvres porcelain.

Professional dealers, or brocanteurs, offering antique and vintage items, such as Mr. Viriot, were mainly concentrated in the mile-long Boulevard de la Liberté that runs diagonally through the city, as well as in the area around the Champ de Mars to the north. This year, secondhand dealers represented about 600 — less than 10 percent — of the 6,500 traders and individuals with registered pitches, Jacques Richir, the deputy mayor in charge of the Braderie, said in an email.

Val Barlow, a visitor from Kent, England, was in the crowd that was inching northward up the Boulevard de la Liberté. “I’m looking for a confit pot,” she said, referring to the type of southern-French pottery vessel that features, perhaps most famously, in Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers.”

“I haven’t found one yet. I see more in English antique shops,” said Ms. Barlow, adding that traders back home in Kent priced confit pots at about 150 pounds. “I guess the English have come over and raided them all.”

Michelle Raddatz, who is based in Stuttgart, Germany, with her husband, a member of the United States military, was pushing a trolley carrying a 5-foot metal bottle rack similar to the one Marcel Duchamp bought new in 1914 to create his first true “ready-made.” She bought her secondhand version for €60.

“I like the mix of European treasures, Ms. Raddatz said. “There are stories attached to all these things, and prices are very reasonable.”

At the Champ de Mars, Bouwe Krol, a Netherlands-based dealer in hand-painted Delft pottery, disagreed with Ms. Raddatz’s assessment of the value on show.

“These are too expensive,” Mr. Krol said, putting a Delft thimble priced at €3 back in its pile. What should it be priced at? “One euro,” said Mr. Krol, who was at least pleased with the purchase of a plate painted with windmills, knocked down to €4, from an asking price of €5.

To be sure, a flea market is a flea market, but this “secondhand” element of the Braderie has contracted, as has the event as a whole, particularly after the 2016 cancellation.

Mr. Richir, the deputy mayor, said that in the past, before the current system of obligatory registration for exhibitors, “people settled everywhere in the city. They sometimes had to come one week before the event in order to have a place.”

This year, although Mr. Richir said exhibitor numbers were up 25 percent compared with 2017, there were dozens of empty pitches in the Rue Nationale, formerly one of the Braderie’s best-known trading streets.

Ms. Homer, the Pennsylvania dealer, had noticed the same thing. According to her, “2015 was much bigger, and it was also much more of a real flea market.”

Appley Hoare, a specialist dealer in 18th- and 19th-century French furniture who is based in Gloucestershire, in western England, said in a telephone interview that she stopped visiting the Braderie more than a decade ago. “Fifteen years ago you could find things. It was exciting, it was mad,” she said. But now, “All the interesting pieces have gone.”

And yet the crowds keep coming. Initial estimates from the Mayor’s office suggested that about 2 million people visited Lille for the Braderie weekend. But on Saturday, few of them appeared to be buying anything other than something to eat or drink.

The Braderie, like London’s Portobello Road market, has become, primarily, an experience.

Ms. Hoare said that if she wanted to find French antiques, she would be more likely to visit specialist fairs in France, such as those in Avignon, Beziers and Montpellier. “If I went to the Braderie now,” she said, “it would be for fun, not to look for stock.”

That’s one thing about the Braderie de Lille that doesn’t seem to have changed: It’s still a lot of fun. Two million people certainly seem to think so.