Michael’s Blog

The Theta Charity Antiques Show has come and gone, and amazed it’s been a year since the last one. Keith and I love to spend time in Houston, with Houstonians unbelievably hospitable. This year was no exception, with both of us topped off with gulf seafood and barbecue for another year.

Or so I hope. Frankly, although we have some very good Houston clients, our results at the Theta Charity Show have been, shall we say, spotty. Very, very spotty. Unfortunately, attendance this year was light from the gala preview through the close of the show on Sunday evening. We saw a few interior designers, but very few, and a few collectors that also come to see us in San Francisco and London. Still, it is worthwhile to wave the flag and we make every opportunity to stay in front of our client base. Having said that, not all clients buy all the time, and there is some attrition amongst collectors, so we never don’t need new customers.

While it is unusual for us to make any significant sales during the  run of any show- as it is for almost all other dealers, if they are willing to tell the truth- we are able to get a sense of what goes on and the energy that is present during the show’s run. While our business was built on collectors, we find increasingly that sales made through interior designers now form a significant percentage of our revenue. And here’s the problem- shows like the Theta Charity Show are designed to be social events, with the society types attending to be seen and have a good time, and, incidentally, maybe buy art and antiques. Certainly, we know what the rules are, and are happy to have our show booth serve as an exquisite setting for a wonderful party.  Ogden Nash’s squib ‘Candy’s dandy, but liquor’s quicker’ only rarely applies at gala previews, though, with sales resistance high no matter the number of cocktails the punter’s drunk.

Still, we do need to have somebody come back and buy, even a few months hence, and here’s the problem: the charity shows are geared to the collector, but it is the interior designer who’s making the purchases. And, interior designers want to be stroked, not by the antiques dealers but by the show itself. Discounted admission? Coffee mornings? That doesn’t count for much amongst designers. Private, hosted designer previews, preferably prior to the gala, work the best, even if sales are forbidden. Indeed, the most significant gala sale we made was through a designer who saw a piece at the designer party the night before, brought his client to the gala, and bought the piece. We’ve been believers ever since. Does a ‘pre-preview’ lighten attendance at the gala? Not a bit of it, as designers who attend the designer preview probably wouldn’t attend the gala anyway, but they will attend, and bring a client or two, if they’ve sussed something out the night before. As well, designer previews, with no sales, or clients, allowed, gives the designer a no-pressure opportunity to view the show. As much as designers like, and need, to advertise their work, either completed or in progress, they are notoriously shy when they don’t have work- and, more importantly, don’t do any shopping- or attend antiques shows.

The ladies of the Theta Charity Antiques Show have, mercifully, cottoned on to a lot of what I’ve written here, and thank goodness. As much as I like Houstonians, and gulf seafood and good barbecue, without the show resulting in good sales, participating becomes, shall we say, problematic.

With the Labor Day holiday, we had the day off and took a short driving trip to a couple of the California missions nearby that, I hate to admit, native Californians that we are, we’d never seen before. I guess, like a lot of other people, we think ‘culture’ is something the emanates from elsewhere, and couldn’t possibly be in our own back yard.

As well, it occurred to us that the California missions are not as frequently visited generally as they once were, since the notion of a foreign religious zealot coming to proselytize and alter the native traditions of an indigenous people is, in the 21st century, about as far away from anyone’s idea of political correctness as it is possible to get. I won’t even try to discuss how anachronistic this point of view is, other than to say that, from the time of the discovery of the new world until only the last 50 years or so, colonialism thrived. Further, what I can gather about the historical figure of Fra Junipero Serra, the founder of the chain of missions in California, makes him seem about as far away from a self-aggrandizing colonial opportunist as it would be possible to be. His motivation was one of honestly felt religious conviction that lead him, at age 56, begin work that finished only with his death, from snakebite, at age 70.

We visited Mission San Antonio de Padua, founded in 1771, and certainly among the earliest survivals of California’s built environment. Cleverly built, too, using simple, locally produced materials- adobe mud bricks, and beams made from locally felled redwood trees- to produce magnificent, trabeated structures. the mission church would certainly inspire an attitude of devotion, with its dim interior, soaring ceiling, and focus on the decoration of the alter- certainly a wonderful setting for the panoply of religion. Environmental impact? There is none, really, as the building was constructed simply of ample local materials and, once derelict, the structure will decompose naturally and eventually be one with the elements from which it arose.

The artwork within the chapel at San Antonio, although ostensibly what one would expect within a Roman Catholic place of worship, bears, it seems to be, greater examination than it, or any of the other mission churches, have received. One wonders to what extent the iconography contained within the illustrations of the stations of the cross were changed slightly to give them resonance with the native worshippers. Certainly, a number of paintings survive from the founding of the missions, and I would venture to say that it would not have been automatic for these neophytes to achieve an attitude of devotion by looking at precisely the same imagery as would have been considered inspirational by a late 18th century European Spaniard.

We also tried to visit the nearby Mission San Miguel Arcangel, sadly closed due to earthquake damage, the Achilles heal of most masonry structures, suffered in 2003. Still, a run of over 200 years isn’t bad for a simply constructed building. Even so, the damage is being repaired and I would encourage my readers to send a donation for the conservation of this precious building to

Friends of Mission San Miguel
PO Box 69
San Miguel, California    93451