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Restoring Toronto’s links to the past
Couple’s custom metalwork adorns many landmarks
by Moira Welsh, staff reporter (Toronto Star)
It all began with a little antique shop on Yorkville Avenue.
The year was 1972. Bernard Snitman had just turned his fascination with the
old and the discarded into a family business — never imagining that over
the next 30 years he’d play a small but inimitable role in restoring the historical
details of Toronto homes and landmarks.
In the early days, Snitman was simply happy he had found a way to indulge
his passion for history and at the same time earn a living. The business was a
partnership, formed by Snitman and his wife, Marna, when they brought home
a load of antiques from England. Snitman had been studying history at the
University of Keele in Staffordshire. England was a source of both antiques and
their business name, which was inspired by the British television show Steptoe
and Son, about a Cockney junk dealer. The show was later recreated in America,
under the name Sanford and Son.
Today, Steptoe & Wife Antiques Ltd. has moved away from antiques,
embracing the concept of historical reproductions. They sell copies of dramatic
cast-iron spiral staircases, do custom metalwork projects, replicas of tin ceilings,
embossed wallpaper, and curtain rods adorned with antique-inspired ornaments.
“The underlying attraction for me has to do with history,” Snitman says.
“I’ve had a lifelong fascination with old things and neglected things. I look for
the value in neglected pieces, not the money value, but the value in usefulness.”
For example, he once became entranced with the design of an elaborate gothic-
style key and found a new application for it as a finial, the decorative end of a
curtain rod. Another time, he discovered that the foot of an English cabinet at
home, created in the unadorned style of the early 20th century Arts & Crafts period,
was so visually appealing that it, too, became part of his curtain rod collection.
“So much of the 20th century was built on the concept of disposability. I was
never comfortable with that. I am a custodian of old pieces. These good things
have a life before and beyond us.” It is through this philosophy that Snitman made
one of his greatest contributions to the Toronto homeowner. In the height of
Toronto’s mid-1980s real estate boom — when 19th-century Cabbagetown houses
were being gentrified, modernized and sanitized with alarming speed —
Snitman became a historical guide for homeowners who didn’t want to lose links
to the past.”It was my little protest movement,” he recalls.
The couple had already closed their Yorkville antique shop and opened
Steptoe & Wife’s Old House Store, at Parliament and Queen Sts., just south of the
booming neighbourhood. His business had, in part, pioneered the local architectural
restoration market by selling products that were not yet part of the mainstream.
Years later, major home-finishing stores began to pick up on some of the products,
but in the early to mid 1980s, traditional wood moulding and embossed cotton
wallpaper were decidedly difficult to find. The store developed the ambience of
a salon, where customers sat with coffee and discussed history, antiquity and the
inner details of century-old homes. Snitman had his collection of books nearby
to provide inspiration or prove a point.
“So much of the trend at the time was to gut the houses. The renovators would
go in and gut them right out. I totally disapproved of that course. But there were
some people who came along and said, ‘Give me some options, what else can
we do here?’ ” When Marna was working outside the company as a marketing
consultant, Snitman offered ideas, like plaster mouldings and wood mouldings for
the ceilings. (“I stopped selling them when Home Depot started carrying them.”)
He sold the embossed wall coverings, borders, friezes and dados, made of
cotton fibre, that were once used in 1800s homes, such as the Carnegie Mansion
in New York. This is a specialized look, and a hard sell, because not only does the
client have to commit to wallpaper, but they must paint it as well.
The store also carried tin ceilings, once seen as a “poor man’s plaster” that
Snitman says was sold door to door in Cabbagetown at the turn of the century.
“It was a perfectly good product and the only reason that it was no longer sold
was that it went out of fashion. The last real tin installations were in the ’30s.
“Tin ceilings were originally used as fireproofing and are useful in areas that are
prone to moisture and mildew. Snitman and Marna used it for decorative purposes
in Ottawa’s Museum of Civilization when they were hired to do restoration work.
By the late 1980s, when government and private money was flowing freely for
architectural restoration projects, the couple were doing custom metalwork for
landmark buildings in Toronto and beyond. Their projects are seen on Toronto’s
Elgin Theatre, Pantages Theatre, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Private
Banking Hall and Kew Gardens, among others. They did metalwork in the
United States as well (the majority of their sales are there) and created staircases
for celebrities like Diana Ross, Larry Hagman and Danny DeVito.
Sharon Mimran, a Toronto designer who has used the Snitmans’ metalwork,
says the staircases give each home a totally different feeling. "It’s a complete
‘wow factor’ when you walk into a home and see a beautiful front foyer. It brings
a whole sense of style to the home,” Mimran says.
Robert Stern, the famous American architect, chose them to create three spiral
staircases for his clients Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley (before the divorce) and
their home on Long Island, N.Y. Each staircase had a different motif, a ball, a sea-
horse and a musical lyre. They had to agree to break the wax moulds later so no
one else could have the same motifs. They actually kept the moulds but haven’t
used them. Joel later sold the home — along with the motifs — to Jerry Seinfeld
for a reported $32 million.
Today, the salon ambience of the past stores has given way to a bigger factory
and office on Tycos Drive in Toronto, although the book collection remains.
Marna has been back full time with the company for the past five years, driving
the human resources administration side of the company, while Snitman creates
new lines and pushes their business deeper into the American market.
Through the years, he has developed a philosophy that he tries to teach to
design students and homeowners: "Pay attention to your surroundings, and find
what matters to you. It can have a huge personal effect on your well-being.
"We are comfort creatures so you have to cover your basic needs. Function comes
first — then the enhancements," he says. "Find what matters to you."
The Snitmans did that 30 years ago, with a little antique shop, where Hazelton
Lanes now stands.
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