We always have the local news on the TV when we’re eating breakfast and getting ready to go down to the galleries. This was part of our morning routine in London and we’ve continued to do this in San Francisco- unreliable weather and public transport are two features that both cities have in common and make watching at least portions of the local AM news imperative.
This morning, what caught my eye was an advert for a home consignment store, with the camera panning across a swimming pool to the facade of a modern design house with lots of windows to interrupt the bare concrete walls. The next shot, inside the house, pictured a woman surrounded by disparate decorative items- a Noguchi-esque fabric covered standard lamp next to a vaguely Italian rococo armchair, upon which was seated an attractive 40 or 50 something woman who invoked, in diffident tones ‘I can afford to shop wherever I like…I choose to shop at Consignment Warehouse.’ Presumably the viewer, too, could avail themselves of the opportunity to buy this sort of cack and become thereby that diffident, ostensibly affluent, woman. What astonishes me is the strongly implied message that good living can be accomplished by anyone who wants to waste their money on junk that looks vaguely like but clearly isn’t the real thing. What a crock, and what poor suckers they are who troop down to these sorts of outlets to buy this kind of merchandise.
Unfortunately, this sort of approach, capitalizing on the ‘wannabe’ mentality, has crept into the fringes of the antiques trade with a number of websites that are the electronic answer to the low end antiques malls that occupy so many failed storefronts. Mind you, we formerly stopped at these if we passed them, but ceased doing so because we rarely found anything that was worthwhile. The antiques malls have moved online with a number of sites- we are bombarded with their spam daily. Just the other day, I typed in the search term ‘Regency’ on one of the sites that shall remain nameless. I got 5 pages with about 30 images per page showing the stock in trade of a number of participating dealers. Let’s define our terms first. Strictly speaking, the Regency was an historical period in England extending from 1811 to 1820 wherein, due to the physical incapacity of George III, his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, was granted by Parliament leave to become head of state in the king’s stead- to act as regent, in other words. By logical extension, the decorative arts of this period are termed ‘Regency’. The Prince Regent, the Prince of Wales that was, was himself a prolific patron of the fine and decorative arts, and was notably adventuresome, witness the onion domes and spires of his Brighton Pavilion, in his taste. The Prince Regent’s fanciful taste aside, the fanciful descriptions and date and style attributions I saw on the online website would certainly leave the Regent himself in the dust. For the life of me, I couldn’t find a single item, and this amongst 150 items illustrated, that was anymore than vaguely accurate in its description, with most of them- well, I can’t imagine where the term came from. No- I’m wrong. One item was described correctly- a mahogany and rosewood crossbanded breakfast table that we had sold to another dealer. They had reprised our correct description- verbatim, I might add.
What galls me about all this is that the punter goes online and browses and comes up with something that, either out of the guile of the dealer in the collective, or more likely out of their ignorance, inveigles the poor browser to make a purchase. Recourse? The buyer has none. Have you tried to return a purchase for money back or even credit for a purchase you’ve made online?
A couple of months ago, California Homes Magazine asked me to write a brief introduction to the antiques section of their semi-annual designers’ resource guide. What I suggested for both collectors and interior designers was to begin their search by attending a vetted antiques show- where every item in every dealer’s booth in the show was looked at by a panel of experts to make certain it was accurately described- and fairly priced for what it was. Since the next West Coast vetted show following publication of the resource guide was the Los Angeles Antiques, I recommended that as the show to attend. I still do. Even if you don’t make a purchase there, what a great opportunity to find out what to buy- and what to expect to pay. Online sites- if the merchandise seems cheaper but you didn’t get what you paid for, what kind of value is that?
So, yesterday TEFAF Maastricht and today the online ‘antiques’ collectives. I guess that’s what we could call a study in extremes.