Author: Michael Chappell

A prominent Texas jurist that I know is fond of repeating an aphorism that goes as follows- ‘if you don’t know your jewels then you had better know your jeweler.’ As this judge is also an astute collector of period furniture, within this context what he means is, if you don’t really know what you’re looking at, rely on the advice of a dealer who does. Sage, and I have often cited this in very many blog entries by way of explaining how collectors from the novice to the experienced are well served by dealing only with members of the accredited trade in art and antiques.

It has then taken some time to bring myself to blog about the more recent round in the continuing vicissitudes of Galerie Kraemer, the redoubtable Parisian family firm now embroiled in controversy over the sale of a number of pieces claimed to be fudged up. One recent claim has resulted in a lawsuit brought by an Italian collector who purchased 13 pieces for a reputed €13,500million.

I say that it has taken me a long time to blog, warring as I am with thoughts and emotions specific to this dealer and the trade generally and not easily dissembled. Kraemer heretofore has a spotless reputation wrought over centuries and my direct knowledge of them is of the highest probity. Indeed, a man of my long acquaintance who is one of the preeminent scholars in the furniture field, and whose reputation is likewise above reproach, often consults with them, and occasionally works in their fair stands at TEFAF Maastricht and elsewhere. It is very, very hard for me to believe that they would be involved in something as nefarious, duping not only the public on such a large scale, but also the heritage industry, and in a manner that requires the complicity of so many other dealers and restorers and scholars. With all that, the notion of an involved and long-time conspiracy is in itself suspect, for as the saying goes, three people can keep a secret so long as two of them are dead.

Vincent Noce in The Art Newspaper recently quotes Laurent Kraemer who believes that not only is the controversy overblown and lacking in any firm technical analysis that would support the claims the disputed pieces were other than as represented- but also thinks the matter a ‘settling of accounts’ amongst dealers and is at least partly aimed at undermining the gallery’s reputation.

Perhaps so. I have to say, in this toughest of tough times for those in the trade- retail dealers and salesrooms- there is an appalling and enduring lack of esprit de corps amongst those for whom the trade is their livelihood. We were reminded of this sad fact just this week, looking at a piece of fine quality that had been damned fairly recently by two dealers well known in both London and New York. While they both hinted to a client who had purchased the piece that it might not be authentic, they had failed to note to the client that they themselves had prior to his ownership eagerly sought to acquire it. We’ve also seen this same sort of thing happen on many occasions at some of the most famous fairs, where a fine quality piece was criticized within the vetting process, only to discover that one of the experts vetting the piece had something similar to sell.

Savaging a dealer and the dealer’s stock, whether openly or more generally with sub-rosa hints, might seem an easy way to eliminate the competition but at what cost? The high-profile troubles of one dealer negatively impacts all of us. If there were ever a time for those of us in the accredited trade to behave with some collegiality, it is now.

Claude Monet- $85 million at Christie’s

To no one’s surprise, the big news in the art world is the successful result of the round of sales from the estate of David and Peggy Rockefeller. With fine quality artwork and fairly good quality furniture and decorative arts, most of it acquired in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s as the couple furnished their homes in New York City and nearby country, it was not only equipped with excellent provenance, but for purposes of the trade, fresh to the market.

Not, mind you, that the trade was in evidence other than in body at the salesroom- very nearly everything was knocked down to private buyers who found a Rockefeller provenance enough reason to pay shall we say a handsome price for very nearly every lot in this compendious sale. With all that, the trade press has been replete with arguments about the favor period material is now finding, witness the success of same at this recent series.

From their lips to God’s ears. I am reminded of so many sales over the years, with burgeoning collections that made huge prices at auction, only to have very many of those pieces then finding their way sooner rather than later back into the salesrooms, and commanding on resale a bare fraction of what had been paid sometimes as little as 6 months before. Buying frenzy, enhanced by the successful marketing efforts of the long purses of the major salesrooms, renders after a very short time very many cases of buyer’s remorse.

Still, anything that raises the profile of the fine and decorative arts- particularly those periods though well-established in the canon but overlooked by the shelter publications in favor of looks like and may have come from the local Target store- is of course a good thing.

Our own ‘Contemporary Classics’ proudly made in the US

It is so much of what we’ve heard over the last couple of years, that manufacturing jobs long lost to the Far East would return to this country. I don’t think flipping burgers at McDonald’s down the road from me is what would be counted as a manufacturing job. It would be interesting, within the nearby McDonald’s, to see what of their interior fittings, even their kitchen equipment, is manufactured in the US.  Not much if anything, I’d wager. Where from and the why? You already know, gentle reader- overwhelmingly, the where from is China, and the why is an acquisition cost fractionally what it is to buy from a US manufacturer. For myself, I would happily pay more for a burger made not just with domestic ingredients, but also prepared using domestically made cookers and afterward to sit on domestically manufactured stools and lean on domestically made counters.  In this, I suspect, I am in the distinct minority.

I mention this by way of introducing something closer to what it is we do, selling period material, and how much has been made over the last couple of years about how changing tastes have been detrimental to the trade. I saw an ad this morning on TV for the company Home Goods, which along with a number of other retailers sells job lot and end of season decorating material for home use- throw cushions, bath towels, decorative flower pots and mirrors- you know it, and you name it, they’ve got it. What you would have trouble naming, though, are the items in stock that are made in the US. Overwhelmingly, the items on offer at any of these retailers were made in low wage countries. Now mind you, nothing is very expensive, but everything is, as an old colleague of mine in the trade used to say when trying to avoid using an opprobrious term to describe third rate material, cheap and cheerful.

Not expensive, and cheap enough to be thrown away, but not very good quality, either. Hopefully biodegradable, too, as so much of it is destined in the not too distant future for the landfill. That sounds sour, and I apologize to my gentle readers, but I ask you- can you say it isn’t so? And while pundits decry the change in taste that seems to now grace the pages of the shelter publications, the internet and HGTV, bear in mind that we’ve a huge number of Chinese manufacturers that are laughing all the way to the bank. The cheap schlock that younger buyers seem so eager to acquire is likewise extremely cheap for low wage countries to produce.

Are you looking for quality and durability? Well, you won’t find it. A few months ago, we sought to replace some Fieldcrest toweling, worn out after some thirty years of use. We were able to find a local outlet that sells Fieldcrest bath linens, but although 100% cotton was clearly of an inferior manufacture. While the towels we were replacing were produced with domestic cotton and spun in a mill in North Carolina, the same brand toweling available now was made in India. A year on, and it’s worn out. Let me see- we got thirty years worth of wear out of the first set of towels that were domestically made and a year’s worth of wear out of the towels made in India. Were the domestically made towels thirty times more expensive than those made in India? Not hardly. Cheaper to acquire, yes- cheaper to own? Not hardly.

Can China, can India produce goods that are of excellent and enduring quality? Of course they can, and have a tradition of doing so that stretches back millennia. Will they do so? And that begs the question- why should they, when we want to price shop and buy looks-like- but- isn’t. For me, of course, when I see what’s on offer at Home Goods, or what graces the pages of most shelters and is broadcast on very many HGTV programs, I know that the typical viewer has never had to replace 30 year old Fieldcrest towels. In more direct terms, our own buyers these days are not only price driven, but don’t actually know domestic quality, because they’ve never seen it.

Fendi, Bond Street- Mallett displaced

So goes the headline in a recent issue of the Antiques Trade Gazette, touting an upcoming trade conference in London featuring, so the article goes, experts on the marketing of luxury goods from whom, presumably, the ailing antiques trade might take a lesson.

Frankly, I don’t know that the trade, composed entirely of smallish, independent businesses have much to learn from what is now the international trade in luxury goods, overarched by LVMH, the behemoth whose marques include Chanel, Fendi, and innumerable others besides the Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennesy brands from which initials the company derives its name. How on earth the trade can compete in promotion with the capital brought to bear by a company such as this, I do not know. Witness my earlier blog posts, Bond Street has become a thoroughfare almost entirely devoted to the retail outlets for the various LMVH brands, with the venerable storefront occupied for so many decades by Mallett for some years now taken over by Fendi.

Moreover, I would question the underlying premise, that the trade might wish to ape luxury goods marketing as this assumes competition for the money spent on what it is the trade has to offer comes entirely from the same pool of buyers. I have for a long time considered that my competition comes from all online retailers who sell furniture and decorative objects, whether period or not. The so-called big box stores and online platforms selling looks-like- but-isn’t non-period and vintage items siphon very much of what formerly went to dealers. The accredited trade also has had much of its business spirited away by the auction houses who now see themselves very much as retail vendors in the business of antiques and fine art. The major houses, in particular, are keenly aware of the benefit of online trading, with Christie’s and Sotheby’s offering commission free buying in their online auctions.

So what to do? It might be thought that dealer organizations might band their members together for purposes of cooperatively promoting the trade. Good luck in doing that- cumulatively, I doubt that every member of the accredited trade could even with the most generous whip around accumulate an annual budget for promotion that would match what Chanel spends in a week. And promotion in what manner and to what effect? Print media? Media ads are hugely cheaper than they were a few years ago, but one needs only to see that very many of the connoiseurial and shelter publications in which ads might be placed have a size of book that is now hugely less, reflecting an ever-growing disinterest in print.

No answers or suggestions in this post, I’m afraid to say, with Chappell & McCullar not a stranger amongst the dealers casting about trying to stay in front of new and prospective clients. While certainly time tested methods can hardly be relied upon to be effective, the imitation of other luxury goods merchants offers no real way forward either. Sadly, the trade in art and antiques counts these days as an ornamental small fish under threat from much bigger fish in a large, international retail pond.

If the book of life is composed of memories, mine must have a burgeoning chapter on The Daily Planet. It was a central feature of what Keith McCullar and I would both consider our salad days, spent living in the Tower District from 1981 to 1989. Mind you, though we moved out of the neighborhood and then eventually away from Fresno, the memories remain vivid, and we’re both of us replete with stories. Just at the moment, every one of these comes flooding back, now we’ve heard the melancholy news of the death of the Planet’s owner, the redoubtable Hannah Benson.

I rarely use the term ‘hangout’ but have no other to describe how we felt about the Planet. For us, an evening out was not complete unless it involved a stop, either for a meal or, more likely, a smart drink or six. Campari and soda in the summer, manhattans the rest of the year- with a cherry and on the rocks (ugh!) for Keith, and classically straight up with a twist for me. A sidebar- you can see that the way we take our drinks is emblematic of our relationship, and it takes a page from Ginger and Fred’s book- I give Keith class, and he gives me sex, although, between ourselves, not as much as he used to.

The tone may be louche, but frankly, that was in no small part the appeal of the Planet, and in this, despite our occasional shall we say bad behavior, we were never, ever chided by Hannah, and not that she turned a blind eye. Once a number of years ago, we were dining with a gay, but very closeted friend of ours- someone, by the way, known to most of my gentle readers, but he’s dead now and decided to the very end to keep his gayness to himself and a very few others so I’ll not betray him. As it happened, we were the three of us planning a trip to London the next week, and, in a wave of horniness enhanced by alcohol, our good friend invited our comely and very, very gay waiter to come along as his guest. Although initially taken aback, our friend’s repeated blandishments turned the head of our young waiter sufficiently that he sought out Hannah and asked her advice. She told him, in our hearing, that he’d be a fool if he didn’t go with us.

The waiter didn’t take Hannah’s advice. Incidentally, it was a wonderful trip and on our return, we made haste to give Hannah an update. The waiter was no longer there, and we never saw him again, with Hannah reporting on the night, with the slightest bit of disdain, he’d found love and didn’t want to work nights.

But Hannah did want to work nights and was loyal to her customers- yes, the food was good and the drinks refreshing, but what Hannah’s hospitality always wrought was fun. We never, ever went to The Daily Planet when we didn’t have fun- and nothing for a guaranteed good time has since taken its place.

Now we’ve returned, when we can, Keith and I attend the Sunday afternoon Fresno Philharmonic concerts, but despite enjoying the performance leaving the concert venue always brings with it more than a bit of wistfulness. In years gone by, post concert almost invariably included a stop at The Daily Planet and our trek home up Van Ness Avenue is yet slightly bittersweet as we pass through the Tower District. Oh, well- blessed memories of Hannah and the Planet and Keith and I will always be thankful for them.