I could have gone searching for a vintage English road-path bike instead of having Mercian build a new one to fit me. But lately, I prefer to refine my taste in bikes by studying the vintage ones, then having new ones built that are rooted in older traditions. One advantage to this approach is it helps keep traditional frame builders employed, and puts food on their tables TODAY.
Don't get me wrong, I love vintage lightweights - but I also want for lugged steel frames, leather saddles, etc., to be a living tradition that is based in useable history, rather than something packaged as nostalgia - in essence, the whole reason I really despise the easily thrown-about "retro" label.
I'm grateful that so many of us do preserve, protect, and still utilize these machines we cherish. Studying them leads to all sorts of new knowledge, and there's nothing like going back to the original to understand something. But again, for these bikes to be more than just collectables, for them to be cultural artifacts that contribute to a living tradition, someone has to take them as a point of departure, and someone has to buy those successor machines.
Whether you prefer to describe it as craftsmanship or art, for me it comes down to contributing to keeping the flame alive. With the resources I have at hand, using the originals as references for modern interpretations makes sense to me.
Russ Fitzgerald
Greenwood, SC
velocio@earthlink.net