antique, a relic or old object having aesthetic, historic, and financial value. Formerly, it referred only to the remains of the classical cultures of Greece and Rome; gradually, decorative arts—courtly, bourgeois, and peasant—of all past eras and places came to be considered antique.
Antiques have been variously defined by law for tariff purposes. The U.S. Tariff Act of 1930 exempted from duty specified antiquities and objects of art produced prior to 1830, and that year became more or less internationally accepted as an appropriate terminal date in defining “antique.” In 1952 the Florence Agreement, sponsored by UNESCO and signed by 17 countries, agreed to “facilitate the free flow of educational, scientific and cultural materials by the removal of barriers that impede the international movement of such materials,” and antiques were affected by subsequent legislation adopted in the participating countries to implement the agreement. The United States, for instance, passed a new tariff act in 1966 permitting the duty-free importation of “antiques made prior to 100 years before their date of entry”; comparable regulations had already gone into effect in other participating countries. In general usage, antiques frequently are now defined as objects of artistic and historical significance that are at least 100 years old.
The collecting of antiques goes back almost as far as history, beginning with the preservation of temple treasures. In England, concern for the historical as well as aesthetic significance of antiques led, as early as the 16th century, to collections illustrating the national past. In 1857 the museum now called the Victoria and Albert opened in London as a repository for decorative arts, intended to stimulate designers as well as collectors. It was followed in 1863 by a great public collection in Vienna, in 1882 by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, and in 1897 by the Museum of the Arts of Decoration at Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture in New York City. Collecting antiques became a truly popular pursuit in the 20th century.