Profile: Antique Curator Kate Jonas Proves Art History is Always in Style

By Audrey Garrett

Photo by Kate Jonas

​​​The latest style in interior design is following no set style at all. 

At least, that's the philosophy that Kate Jonas, an antique curator and interior designer based in Richmond, Virginia, lives by. “There is no trend,” she tells me over Zoom, while two symmetrical turquoise paintings in vintage gold frames hang behind her desk. “It is what you feel comfortable with in your home.” 
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Jonas started working within the antique curation world after over 10 years as a bank teller and manager in Richmond,. At 22, Jonas plunged into the world of financial management and clients in crisis. “I could be dealing with a widower one minute, and the next, someone who's just gotten married,” she says. “You're changing hats constantly.” The job was not her passion, but taught her skills that would lead her to it. In 2016, Jonas sold her first five antique products on her Instagram @electriccurator and never looked back.

​"There is no trend. It is what you feel comfortable with in your home."

​She says, “(Finance) helped with relationships, which is what the antique business really is built on.” I could tell Jonas had experienced every mood known to man while sitting at a customer service table. During the interview, she asks me questions about my hobbies, proving her friendliness cannot be hindered even by all the awkwardness of the Zoom format.
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Jonas moved on from bank telling to antique curation after realizing it was her favorite thing to do. The process of finding products, learning about them, and selling them “tickles all of my serotonin and dopamine receptors." She adds, “It's just the thrill of the treasure hunt.” Filled with energy and wonder from a day job many would consider a dream job, Jonas is still stunned that finding and photographing antiques for Instagram makes a profit: “Making money from doing that, I get goosebumps talking about it.”
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​Jonas did not always turn a profit from buying and reselling antique pieces of porcelain dalmatians and 1940s vanity mirrors, though. In the beginning, Jonas juggled raising two young children while starting her online curating business. “I was sourcing items just when I could when the girls were at school,” she explains. To keep up with her busy schedule and unpredictable hours, Jonas turned to Instagram, making her business easily accessible at home and on the go. “Running the business on Instagram from my house was necessary because I had two little children,” she says.

“(Thrifting) tickles all of my serotonin and dopamine receptors, it's just the thrill of the treasure hunt.”

2020 brought new challenges to Jonas’s passion-filled career: “I’ve had trouble sourcing with the pandemic. With shipping delays, items are scarce.” The pandemic has caused antiquing and interior design thrifting to become more popular as people look for unique vintage pieces to spruce up their possibly permanent surroundings. Jonas emphasizes that “people are not spending money on vacations, they’re sitting in their homes and looking at everything and going ‘Well, let’s make home improvements.’'' The antiquing boom has caused a spike in the product craze for vintage and specialty pieces, leaving Jonas with a slimmer chance to find unnoticed or underpriced treasures at picked-over estate sales or unsorted garages.
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To combat product shortages and shipping delays Jonas relies on her network of fellow curators. “I've been relying on my local friends who maybe don't have a market… but know that I will,” Jonas says. She adds lovingly, “Those friends helped me get through the pandemic.” I always wondered what career antiquers were like. On TV, they were normally depicted as older polo-wearing retirees auctioning vintage toasters on shows like Antiques Roadshow. Jonas describes a very different breed of antique aficionados than the ones of my channel-surfing memory.
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 “My friend Richard and I call it a ‘thrift-gasam’ every time we find something in thrift,” she says laughing.

​I never imagined fellow antique finders joking that antique shopping is as good as sex. I listened to Jonas talk about her network of antiquing friends, wishing I could join them on their next road trip or Zoom call to hear them discuss Art Deco furniture or Limoges porcelain. The conversation makes me wish I had taken another art history class. “We're not saving lives here. We're talking about history, beautiful objects, we feed off that energy,” she says, describing her light-hearted and simple friendships made through antiquing.  “I haven't even physically met some of them, believe it or not.” She sounds like my sister scoping out her potential friend groups at college. With every memory, Jonas convinces me antiquing might have a Benjamin Button effect on those who engage with its historical objects.  
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After gabbing over Instagram friends and treasure hunting slang Jonas describes her other career as a lifelong Richmond resident. She is a vocal fan of the city’s growing art scene: “Richmond is a hub for that (talent) right now. We've got some of the best artists [taking off] whose foundations began here.” 

Having lived in Richmond her whole life, Jonas notices the positive change toward inclusivity from the Richmond of her upbringing, which relied heavily on privilege, family connections, and wealth. “The lucky sperm club is dying out,” she tells me, referencing generations where “winning just based on who your parents were” was standard. Swiveling in her chair, she apologizes, “I have gone on a tangent. I've had so much coffee, and I'm afraid I've forgotten the original question.

We end our conversation on her emotional attachment to interior design. Jonas summarizes the importance of furniture curation and of hiring experienced interior designers: “Emotionally, one paint color may give somebody anxiety that makes somebody else happy.” The walls of Jonas’s office are white, not because their stark quality makes her happy, but because they serve as the ideal backdrop for Instagram photoshoots of vintage porcelain figurines and antique Chinese wedding jars. As I’ve learned from her informational Instagram story, blue geometric square symbols on Chinese wedding jars symbolize “double happiness,” referencing a couple conjoining in extraordinary circumstances. The symbol’s symmetry and blue-painted boxes remind me of Jonas’s blue square framed paintings hanging on either side of her desk. Like a loving couple, Jonas and curation conjoined through extraordinary circumstances. Together, they give off double happiness for Jonas and her clients lucky enough to find her vintage cricket boxes on their explore page.