For about the umpteenth time, someone has brought to my attention an article published late last year in the New York Times about changing patterns of taste and how it has affected the antiques trade. Offhand, I would say that this change in pattern has more to do with the pervasive presence of le gout big-box than a rejection of le gout Rothschild but nevertheless, a run away from so-called ‘period rooms’, themselves more a holdover of Victorian style than an accurate homage to history. We’ve considered this change a given for as long as we’ve been in business. For myself, I love spare with items of period and type that link together to give interest, and not to overwhelm. That’s what we have in all our own living spaces- which includes where we work- and it is this that gives us our own look, and it is, at the end of the day, our look that sells the stock in trade that are its component parts.
With all that, I nevertheless have to acknowledge that what many people paid for period items even 10 years ago was expensive. Not, mind you, for things like the Badminton Cabinet, but for more vernacular pieces. I attended an auction this morning in the English Midlands wherein a fairly standard, workmanlike but very unprepossessing late 18th century oak bureau was offered, and it sold for what it should sell for. However, it was sold along with the payment receipt and invoice from when it was sold by the retail trade in 1982. I was floored, not just that 30 years ago it commanded such an atrocious price, but that someone would be fool enough to pay it. But at some point in the past, dealers had so little invested in their inventory, and their cost of carry was so low, that they could mark items up hugely and wait until someone, and there always is someone, to whom the piece spoke and who also happened to have that much money in their wallet.
Now, of course, with a plethora of databases that any Luddite- by which I mean myself- can access, what’s reasonable both in terms of price and quality can be sussed out, and a reasonably informed dealer can speak reasonably to a reasonably informed punter about the merits of what’s on offer, and how price might be affected.
And prospective buyers are increasingly spoiled for choice, not just from vendors of period material, but also from the welter of online resources for contemporary- by which I mean brand new- pieces that are, as they say, both cheap and cheerful. But there’s still plenty of room, and sufficient demand, for the period item, provided it’s reasonably priced. And that reasonable pricing, I hope, is the real change.