The antiques business is fraught with surprising nuances, surprising to me, anyway, and one of the most is the level of intimacy we establish with our private clients. What put me on to this was the frequency, begun some years ago, with which we had contact with our clients, whether they were in a mood to make a purchase or not. The consideration that I’ve given over the course of the last couple of days to collecting reminds me that Keith and I share a mindset with most of our private clients, with a variety of interests that are sometimes mere enthusiasms, and sometimes pervasive, lifelong quests.
With English antiques as our core business, we nevertheless frequently become the go-to guys for a variety of different types of material. Only today we have been discussing, pardon the alliteration, Venetian veduti and French vitrines with good clients who, frankly, are not collectors of English antiques.
That people ask us to help them find disparate objects in the fine and decorative arts has a lot to do with comfortability. Well, people find Keith comfortable, anyway. A local arts journalist characterized me as ‘acerbic.’ Still, that people overlook my personality and allow both of us into their homes when we deliver a purchased item always, by the letting us into their dwelling space, establishes an intimacy. This experience has never, ever not involved the client themselves, invariably at home to meet us, wishing to discuss their own collecting interests and objectives. The brief installation results in discussions with clients that, as occurs with any meeting of minds, go on for years afterward.