All of us have seen the news headlines about the massive year end bonuses nearly everyone in the financial services industry will receive. For those of us in the antiques and fine art trade, we hope this has a significant trickle down effect. In fact, we are already getting inquiries from all around the world, realizing that Mumbai, in this age of globalization, is as much a money centre as New York or London.
Although this blog isn’t really meant to be an open letter to those who are considering, now that they have the money, to invest in antiques, but, of course, that’s my business, and hopefully anyone who reads my blog will consider what’s written here- and not think it is too much an out in out commercial for our enterprise. The fact is, antiques continue to be an astonishingly good investment. Notice I said ‘antiques’ and not ‘art and antiques’. The fact is, fine art tends to be more driven by fashion than antiques- witness, at long last, the recent recovery of impressionist art after being in the doldrums for nearly 15 years. I’ve recently read Meryle Secrest’s biography of that redoubtable art dealer Joseph Duveen. In the early years of the last century, Duveen was selling Gainsboroughs to American collectors for prices that have almost never been realized in the 100 years since!
What’s less well known is that Duveen was also selling the Fricks and the Huntingtons magnificent 18th century furniture to enhance the settings of the artwork that took pride of place. While the Gainsboroughs and Raeburns might not have fared all that well, one has only to look at the recent Maurice Segoura sale to see that the Roussel commode Henry Clay Frick may have groaned when he paid Duveen $1,500 for it, would now cost the best part of $1 million. That’s a pretty good ROI in any man’s language.