In the middle of East 11th Street right off Broadway sits the mysterious, and what some passersby have coined “intimating,” shop front of Metro Antiques, the windows displaying a pair of rare, colossal oak painted cabinets. To enter, visitors must wrap their hand around the cold surface of the brass knocker and bang on the wide oak doors, sending vibrations through one’s body while simultaneously being transported into a different world. One is most likely to be greeted by the shop’s owner, Maurice Margules, better known in the neighborhood as “Blackie.”
A legendary New York City-based antiques dealer, he has been in this colorful and infamous area specializing in Jacobean oak and early furniture for nearly 50 years.
So how does a young man from the Bronx become interested in the antiques business? According to Blackie, it was, “Just three things really. The first was Warner Brothers! No really, all you have to do is watch All Through the Night when you’re 9. This beautiful woman who is being followed by spies comes into an antiques store and the dealer himself is some shady character who goes about helping her. It’s a world of adventure, murder and beautiful women.”
Smiling, he continues with a description of a book he read when he was about 14 by Damon Runyon, which he sees as the quintessential recruiting piece for all antique dealers, because in it one learns that certain businesses and people cannot be clocked, such as antiques and dealers, which was an idea that he, and many dealers, rather liked.
Third, was because of his knack for history and his desire to know what happened when. As an aside, he added, “Even though dealers look sociable, they really tend to be antisocial and unemployable, so if you don’t get into the business you’re done for.” So perhaps that is more like three and a half reasons, but for a man who started out with no specific goals in mind other than to learn, it is pretty good; actually better than good.
“I didn’t know anything, but I had a sense and a sensation and was able to fit it all together. I used to think, ‘Queen Anne chairs, how did they know she sat in them?’ Ha, I’ve come a long way since then. I go beyond and learn as much as I can. I was only ever interested in learning and growing more.” And he did do just that; he learned to become selective and really believe and love the merchandise with which he works, as other dealers in the area have done.
“Of course people come and go,” says Blackie. “This used to be an importing center and now there are only one or two importers left. You begin to see a pattern where three dealers would leave and then later only two would come back; it’s a cycle that in the end left the area with less than what it started with. However, it’s the dealers who really believe and love their stuff who are the ones here now.”
However, just because the dealers are more selective in what they sell and their merchandise is top of the line does not mean selling antiques is any easier. “No, it’s not easy,” exclaimed Blackie. After a pause, he adds, “The industry has switched from people who were buying for their own desires and interests to the wealthy looking to look more wealthy by turning away from the traditional and buying modern more for background than for knowledge and personal joy.”
Not only have the dealers and clients changed, but the area has changed as well. Blackie describes his street back in the day as quiet but business was still busy, with the nearby shops just selling trinkets, and so few cars that he could go out in the street and play ball with his dog for hours. “In every industry,” says Blackie, “you experience history and its changes.”
When asked what he thought about the future of the market and if people vie for investment in antiques rather than stocks, he explained, “Buying antiques is just that, investment advice. The buying rationale changes regardless of market status and the energy industry awaiting the latest direction, whatever it may be. I believe it will be exactly like the business I’m doing right now, which is with people rejecting the fancy fanfare location, with its resulting hype and fashion-driven format, and releasing themselves from the grip of the landscaper to trust their own confidence and choice to select what they themselves are careful with and want, thereby setting a different standard for value and investment.”
So Blackie may not sell you a Seventeenth Century traditional oak table with the promise of a 110 percent turnover, but he can guarantee you top of the line pieces, and loyalty. With a warehouse in Troy, N.Y., chock-full of stock, his showroom on 11th Street is about one-one-hundredth of the treasure he has stored away.
After years of saving good looking women and the country, until the Department of Homeland Security took over, he has been able to put together what he calls the largest stock of Jacobean oak and early furniture in the world, with the hopes that buyers of the new world can be revitalized by his motto, “When your landscaper says, ‘No!’ Metro says ‘Yes!'”
Editor’s Note: Cristina Tafuri is junior visual arts major at Eugene Lang College-The New School University in New York City. This article was prepared as a final project for her Art and the Antiques Market class.
