The art and antiques fair season is truly on us, with our colleagues Reindeer Antiques having concluded the BADA Fair in London, Maastricht winding up, and ourselves preparing for the Los Angeles Antiques Show in late April. This will be our 6th LA Antiques Show- hard to believe!- and something we love to do. I’ve written about this before, so will only mention it in passing- the LA Antiques Show is one of the few vetted shows in this country, by which I mean every item is looked at and certified for authenticity by a panel of experts. Consequently, every purchase can be made with confidence. Further, dealers are invited to participate in the show based on their established (good, of course!) reputation. This sounds like shameless self-promotion, but, again to reprise something I’ve discussed over and over, for the occasional and the beginning collector who really wants to expand their knowledge base, and the interior designer whose hands are already full dealing with clients, the vetted show provides the perfect venue for seeing the best of the best, establishing thereby both a quality and pricing benchmark. Buy at a vetted show, and be assured of getting what you are paying for.
All that said, we do go to Los Angeles to sell, not just impart knowledge to browsers. And, frankly, our experiences at the show have been, in the main, very good. The occasional at-show sale is generally supplemented by follow-on business, as it is for most of our colleagues. In addition to the material that any given dealer has on offer, the collector and the interior designer often times likes a particular dealer’s look- the type of gear, how it’s deployed, and so forth. As well, relationships are everything, and we find, thankfully, that our clients tend to be repeat buyers. Again, that’s not self-promotion- our colleagues at the show all have exactly the same experience. And, of course, that is why the shows should be seen by dealers as collegial: not only do none of us have exactly the same material- even when our areas of specialization are similar- no one dealer has the same look as any other dealer.
We look forward to a good show in Los Angeles and all this in spite of the, shall we say, flux in the financial markets. I’ve said enough in past blog entries about, for example, the so-called sub prime mortgage market. Suffice to say, no one has yet telephoned us in a panic, offering their collection of 18th century furniture at a knock-down price in order to stave off foreclosure. Unfortunately, the antiques trade abroad has felt more of the impact of all these things than we have locally. The trade abroad has never really recovered from the fear of travel induced by 9/11, and now already tough trading conditions are exacerbated by the weakness of the dollar. In London, the reduced number of American buyers, the trade’s traditional mainstay, is now combined with the influx of oil-rich Russians, who, although occasionally making antiques purchases, find owning London real estate more to their liking and are driving property prices, and rents, through the roof. I wrote over a year ago about the fate of Mount Street, a traditional venue in London’s Mayfair, now taken up less by fine antiques dealers than with the likes of Louis Vuitton.
But, I understand our colleagues at Reindeer had good traffic at the BADA Show, and pressing the flesh is where it all has to start. Frankly, we love to do shows, talk to people, including other dealers who we never have a chance to see except at shows. And, we look forward to good attendance at the Los Angeles Antiques Show. It’s interesting, but the slow down in the residential housing market has, in some respects, had a positive impact on our business. With low interest rates and rapid appreciation, people at all levels were formerly obsessed with churning their homes, with the challenge to see how quickly a house could be built and decorated, and then be put back on the market for what seemed the certainty of a hefty payoff. Certainly, the cycle has slowed, and our clients, many of them, are obliged to stay put. 
What’s happened, though, is the homeowner who didn’t particularly care if he had a piece of furniture not to his taste in, for example, the entry hall- since, of course, he was going to sell the house in 6 weeks anyway- now he has to look at something he dislikes for the indefinite future. The result? Now we have shoppers- who are spending the time, and, critically more important, spending the money- to find the right piece. So- will the Los Angeles Antiques Show be remunerative? I’d bet on it.