The current enthusiasm for retro things is astonishing. It accounts for a massive part of the global internet market, just as it drives a global love affair with second-hand markets, charity shops and car-boot sales. While there were 115 342 objects described as ‘antiques’ at auction on eBay when I looked earlier this year, there were 630 244 items listed under ‘retro’ or its analogue, ‘vintage’ (Carter’s Guides define vintage as post-'50s objects, although I make allowances for fuzzy boundaries). We are seeing antiques shops disappear before our eyes and their premises taken over by twentieth-century emporia. Go to Fitzroy in Melbourne, Surry Hills in Sydney, or Notting Hill or Alfies Antiques Market in central London and see for yourself.

Some antiques dealers now make the switch before they go under. As it develops, we see its commercial side grow: there are now exhaustive op-shop guides to New York, London, Paris, Sydney and Melbourne; television has realised its popular appeal with a new suite of programming spanning its entire range, all obtaining top ratings; and there is a massive new manufacturing base built on continuing series of retro designs and reissues. 

Of course, a lot of this is made in China, but the estate of Abram Games, the poster designer from the 1940s to '80s, now sells reissues, Arabia in Finland does the same with many of its choice vintage designs, as does Jobs the bespoke Swedish fabric designer/maker. In fact, one does not have to work the charity shops to find vintage Lucienne Day fabrics or Florence Broadhurst wallpapers. Most of the top furniture manufacturers have continued to make many of the designs we hunt down in top auction houses.

Objects with compelling histories of design and manufacture compare favourably to what is currently on sale new in shops. While there is a vibrant design market, where similar details of pedigree and provenance are craved, it is a fact that as we stopped being a manufacturing culture, the vast majority of things around us are produced overseas by people we do not know, in towns and regions we have never heard of, and under conditions of which we would probably be ashamed. 

Adrian Franklin is the author of Retro: A guide to the mid-20th century design revival, published by NewSouth.