My mind is wandering happily as I drive home from a long trip, 637 miles and two days. Every mile logged, a receipt for every cup of coffee, all IRS-ready. Gotta do that with gas the price it is - but I'm wandering off the point before I've even started.

I've just delivered two big, heavy pieces of seventeenth-century oak furniture, not an obvious fit with twenty-first century lifestyles, you might think. The uses that they were made for no longer exist, but people still wanted them.

One was a livery cupboard. Livery was a ration of bread, cheese, and beer that was given each day to each member of the household. There was one, large cooked meal of the day that everyone ate together in the great hall, the master of the household, his family, the servants, travelers and guests - an elaborate, ceremonial affair. For the rest of the day, people sustained themselves with their livery, and the livery was distributed from the livery cupboard. We don't do that, these days, although the oft-lamented decline of the family dinner, and the meals eaten on the run may be taking us back to something similar. But now, the center of it all is the fridge and the microwave, not a massive oak cupboard.

At the meal of the day, the master of the household would have sat in a large, impressive armchair, and everybody else would have perched on stools or benches. The chair signified his power and status, like a throne. Such a chair, which we now call a "wainscot," was my second delivery. It went to a charming couple, for whom the idea of a "head" of the household would have been unthinkable. I carried it upstairs to a small den, and we sank into a modern couch and admired it.

"Sit on it," I said, "It's much more comfortable than it looks." "Oh, I will," he replied, "but for now I just want to look at it."

The livery cupboard was going to hold linens or something in the dining room. She would find some use for it, she told me, and it seemed that the use would be not too far removed from its original purpose - at least it would be food-related. The chair would hardly be used at all, except in the way that a piece of sculpture is used.

Antiques don't come with their functions built in: unlike modern furniture, their design carries no prescription for how we should use them, or even what sort of room they should go in. An antique dressing table looks fine in any room of the house, but a modern one wouldn't.

We can use antiques for something close to their original function, a completely different one, a cradle as a log bin for example, or we might not even "use" them, in the practical sense, at all. Sitting and looking at a chair, enjoying its beauty and craftsmanship, listening to the stories it can tell - that's our imagination using it in a way that's just as functional as sitting on it at the table. And it's a use that a modern chair cannot have.

Antiques are so much more versatile than new things, we can live with them in so many different ways, and the way that we choose to is the way that we have chosen. There's a freedom about antiques that gives our imagination a free rein. I do like selling antiques to people with that sort of imagination.

Oh well, only another 20 miles to go, and then I'll be relaxing at home at last with a glass of wine, Lisa and the animals, and, of course, our antiques.

Yours sincerely,

John Fiske