From John Dunn's ClassicBicycle.com website. Food for thought!!!
"This Authenticity Business
Text:
He was one of the first buyers of a "Flying Gate" in 1938. Just after the war, he decided to replace the heavy, and now rusting, Dunlop high-pressure chromium plated rims with Constrictor Conloys. Whilst doing this, he thought he would add the very latest alloy Harden "Bacon Slicer" hubs. Whilst the wheels were off he thought he would continue to lighten the load by replacing those pre-war steel callipers with GB's new hiduminium brakes.
By the late forties, the frame was beginning to look the worse for wear. So he had it re-enamelled, with new transfers applied. In the mid-fifties, he bought himself a motorcycle. The "Gate" would leave the shed less and less frequently until, with marriage, a family and a sidecar on the motorcycle for days out, it would leave the shed no longer. Years later, as a pensioner, he "discovered" the "Gate" at the back of the shed and sold it cheaply through the local paper. A collector had bought a bargain.
Had he bought an authentic classic bicycle? By the highest collecting "standards", he had surely not. So, what to do next? Research the old pre-war Baines catalogues. Strip the bicycle down. Re-enamel it as close to an original finish as possible. Sell off those valuable Conloys and Hardens and replace with something more appropriate in chromed steel. Replace those hiduminiums with a single steel calliper on the front. Now he has an authentic machine. Or does he? Should the restoration standards that we would apply to a Victorian antique ordinary apply to his lightweight from the 'thirties? Are we not losing something precious in the process?
To start with, what constitutes an original lightweight in the first place? All makers of any worth would build, equip and enamel to the original buyer's own specification. So catalogue details are only ever an approximation. And what about the evolution of the machine, as the original owner set about improving it. Is not the genuine history behind those modifications just as interesting, if not more so, than the results of a spurious restoration, based on an incomplete knowledge of the first owner's specification?
So, which is more authentic? I would say the bicycle as it emerged after long years in the shed. Here is more than just a machine. Here is the hand and the intention of that first owner of sixty years previous. Here is a development that would have been typical of any lightweight from that era. Here is a machine with a history, a life. From it we learn something about cycling as it was.
What about the restored machine? Dead. Its connection with its first owner's intentions severed forever. At best we learn something about what an original "Gate" might have appeared like.
If that first owner had maintained his interest in cycling, what then? What if he had continued to add to his machine, equipping it with, say, a Shimano deraillier to help him up the hills in later life? Here I think my true authenticity argument is beginning to weaken. Yet still . yes surely, it is the genuine article. What do you think?"
© 2000 Classicbicycle Ltd