Black, or should I say ‘bleak’, Friday

A recurrent conversational theme amongst the cognoscenti- by which I mean myself and my handful of loyal readers- is the displacement of traditional trade venues. While it is often argued that, for period materials, a lot of what’s gone on has to do with changing tastes, with a younger buying public more in tune with 20th and 21st century material, a private discussion with anyone who deals in what might ostensibly seem the mode of the present day would yield the same degree of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And that degree of angst seems fairly well spread across the land, even up to and including that bastion of nouveau billionaires, the San Francisco bay area. We were surprised to find this past Friday that the local branch of an international auction house with whom we trade from time to time had shed a goodly number of senior staff, with the possibility floated it might close down that location entirely. While it had been reported in the fine art press this time last year it was considered as an acquisition by a saleroom partly owned by the Chinese government, nothing came of it.

While the purchasing opportunities for fine art and antiques have changed, they haven’t precisely shrunk overall. Although the retail venues like Bond Street, Madison Avenue, and even San Francisco’s own Jackson Square are shadows of their former selves, auction houses and online sales platforms, to say nothing of the websites of traditional dealers, provide a spoiled for choice opportunity for all and sundry. And these alternate venues, clearly, are struggling themselves.  And the why of this?

What hasn’t occurred is any concomitant expansion of the money that’s available to make purchases from whomever. Nothing has changed the simple fact that all buyers have a budget, by which I mean disposable monthly income, and that budget is finite. Our trade colleagues abroad are forever enquiring of our sales activity amongst the tech billionaires in the greater bay area, presuming that these folks have money to spend, and that as it is quickly and newly come upon will spend it profligately. Oh, that they would. The monthly budget limitation, in my experience, applies to all buyers of any stripe, established or, shall we say, parvenu. People spend what they happen to have on hand, and I have never, ever seen or heard of any punter encashing an investment to buy any piece of fine or decorative art. One irony, though, is the investment in and the floating of the plethora of on-line sales platforms.  With so many about, they do, like locusts, come and they go, but for the interim, the cost to develop and launch functions to siphon off a fair bit of cash from investors that might arguably otherwise go to purchase worthwhile items from the established trade.

Further, our competition for the monthly supply of the ready consists not just of erstwhile investment, or even of items of collector quality crowding in, but such like as Porsches and Maseratis. In this circumstance, we may level the playing field, or tip it in our favor, when we can figure out how to move a pair of Linnell salon chairs down the road with the buyer seated in them, and the price tag prominently displayed. A ridiculous notion, of course, but the alternative seems to be to wait until we experience a wave of connoisseurship. Until that time, the winnowing out amongst members of the trade that was this last week given evidence in the local saleroom will continue apace.

Judging with their feet

If you are interested in the business of the trade in art and antiques, Skate’s Market Research is nearly as handy as the pocket on a shirt. Although they do compile the statistics associated with blockbuster auction and private sales, they also provide stats on things less sexy but more germane to the everyday decisions a dealer must make, including whether or not to participate in art and antiques fairs.

With the bricks and mortar venues around the world in their death throes, the pop up venues that art and antiques fairs provide function as what would seem a logical, relatively low cost opportunity to get one’s gear in front of the buying public. With the show organizer and frequently a worthy benefit charity performing the ostensible heavy lifting of promoting the venue and purchasing opportunity, the dealer then only, it would seem, has to show up and sell to the raft of people massed at the front door waiting to make a longed for purchase.

What’s not apparent is the dealer’s cost associated with the fair. The rental of the booth, decorating the booth, lighting, electrical outlets, phone outlets, and many times, assessments for advertising in the show catalog and promoting the fair through local and national media. Oh, yes- and the cost of transport. For us, the least expensive transport bill is $15,000. On the whole, the least expensive fair we participate in costs us, before we sell anything, $52,000.

I suppose if one were guaranteed sales into the six or seven figures, the significant investment for what often functions as a pop up store that exists for no longer than a long weekend might seem paltry. But the fact is, fair attendance and at-show purchases have been on the wane. And this is where Skate’s becomes an invaluable tool- they report fair performance with a degree of accuracy that is, shall we say, somewhat illusory when one questions fair promoters. Mind you, fair promoters, whether those who operate for profit or those who are an arm of a not for profit worthy cause, seek to put the best face on their face to induce art and antiques dealers to participate. One would suppose with the numbers of dealers becoming thinner and thinner on the ground, the word about the relative performance of a fair would quickly make its way around. Our experience, though, is that dealers most generally have attended the same school of obfuscation as most fair promoters.  With this in mind, what we do, long after the fact, is assess the number of individual dealers returning to the same fair and assume that, if they are returning, it must constitute a successful venue. We track this over years and have determined some surprising facts. One of the more vaunted fairs that promotes itself as a major international venue has had a dealer turnover of nearly 130% in the last four years. Clearly, the dealers are judging the success of this fair with their feet.

Keith and I are just returned from a fair we felt might be a fit for us, but expensive so wanted to check it out thoroughly before we even put numbers together precedent to giving it serious consideration. Frankly, one could as they say have shot a cannon through the venue on the Saturday afternoon we visited. Skate’s recent report on the success of this fair, and ‘success’ is the word used by the fair organizer, indicated that attendance was in the mid five figures. However, divisible by the number of dealers exhibiting, the per booth attendance was in the- wait for it- low three figures.  We determined, based on our lowest estimated cost to participate, this resulted in a cost of $300 for each visitor to our booth. That is on a par with handing out a couple of bottles of Dom Perignon to each gallery visitor just for darkening our door. For those of you with a profound thirst, please don’t get the idea we are planning on doing either the fair or offering free champers any time soon.

Provenance

A letter floated in to the galleries the other day from another dealer, who by way of representing the quality of her inventory, cited its ‘provenance’. Within the context of the letter, it appeared that she didn’t really understand the meaning of the word. But then it occurred to me that this term, so often used in the trade, and on ‘Antiques Roadshow’, is probably not completely understood. Perhaps, then, a brief discussion and the implications when applied to a piece of furniture might be of some use to all ten of my readers.

As a working definition, ‘provenance’ simply means who owned the piece before. Clearly, with a number of pieces in our inventory as much as 300 years old, everything has been owned by very many people before, but we don’t often cite provenance. Mostly, the prior ownership is either unknown or insufficiently significant to be worth noting. When provenance is cited, it is for several different reasons. Firstly, provenance when it can assist in attributing the piece to a known workshop. In the 18th century heyday of stately homebuilding in England, Thomas Chippendale, Mayhew and Ince, Thomas Cobb, William Vile, and a number of prominent craftsmen completed vast suites of movables to furnish these massive new piles. Chances are, if the piece has remained in the home and with the family for whom it was originally commissioned, the original invoice, prepared and issued by Chippendale or the like, survives. With English furniture in particular, rarely labelled or marked by its maker, provenance often plays a critial role in attribution.

More recent provenance, absent knowing its original owner, might not be helpful in attribution, but can argue for the quality of the piece. For instance, a mid 18th century serving table in our inventory was part of a collection assembled in the early part of the 20th century by the furniture historian R.W.Symonds, one of the leading intellectual lights in the English furniture field. We always include this when citing the piece’s provenance. Although of a Chippendale design in the Chinese taste, it is unlikely that Symonds chose this piece for that reason. Rather, it is more likely that the selection was based on timber quality and color, and the fact that the blind fret carving to the legs and the frieze is original. Since very many pieces of this basic design were ‘enhanced’ by recarving in the Chippendale revival period of the late 19th century, original carving was, and still is, an extremely desirable feature.

Finally, provenance can sometimes be a value-added feature on its own, regardless of the quality of the piece, if the prior owner was or is a person of particular celebrity. Immediately I think of the collection of the late Bill Blass, auctioned off at Sotheby’s a few years ago. Some of the Regency furniture was of excellent quality, some was not, but everything sold for a lot of money. Interestingly, although very much a factor in the trade in America in the early part of the last century, aristocratic provenance seems lately to be more of a selling feature in Europe. Although nearly all European countries are long since republics, presumably buyers there still encounter enough aristos wandering around that it makes the notion of aristocratic provenance more meaningful.

Remembering Jack R. Chappell

It’s been a couple of weeks, and the figurative stirring up of the dust has settled back to sort of what it was before, so now is an appropriate time to briefly reflect on the life and death of my father, Jack Chappell. An accomplished man who did well in his sphere, he was well liked, and well regarded, which to my mind is not quite the same thing. In any event, at his memorial service, he pulled a very full church.

An educator, a farmer, and a sportsman, he pursued these endeavors with an equal passion that, when these interests competed as they did from time to time, overset him. As he was perforce the overarching presence and personality in our household, the rest of the family was as a consequence oftentimes overwhelmed, as well. Quick to anger, but just as quick to forget, life at home was never ever dull.

Dad had a great love of the outdoors, and particularly our section of the Sierra Nevada, with resultant annual late summer trips through the high country on horseback where we’d not see another soul for weeks at a time. Though at the time I would rather have been visiting the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, now I realize this was an experience that cannot today be repeated, and am grateful for it.

A strong personality, with a son of strong personality, we frequently did not get along. With all that, we were as much alike as we were different, which was something my father understood without actually saying so, and as a consequence, kept his distance when he sensed that our personalities would collide. He loved family life, but hated discord, where for me, discord always seemed an inevitable part of life, and while not to be courted, need not be feared, either.

However, for the two of us, there were no go areas that functioned as not quite barriers, but hurdles. As Dad became very ill very quickly, overcoming these was much on my mind. But as I broached a couple of things that were heretofore verboten, my father was yet resistant and then it occurred to me- he was facing the prospect of eternity, and was very busy making up his own soul. What I sought to accomplish was the smallest of small potatoes in the cosmic scheme of things- and was mightily dwarfed by what my father faced. So the time was, as all wise people counsel, to let it go.

My father died on March 19, and while he’s left a void in my life, that void constitutes the largest element of my own grief. What both of us shared was a spirituality, albeit manifested differently in both of us, but I am nevertheless confident that he is now possessed of the wisdom of the ages, and that some of that wisdom he is yet able to communicate to me with some benefit. What for both of us were hurdles I considered were specific to our relationship I now know are part of life’s vicissitudes. While I don’t have the understanding of these that my father has achieved in his passing, I am optimistic that I will in the fullness of time, and realize that this is a gift my father has given me.

Crap that competes

With the trade in art and antiques in a state of shall we say flux, my readers have doubtless discerned my frequent and so far not completely successful grappling with the why of this. The major salesrooms have had problems with revenue growth and profitability, with the most graphic result of this the head rolling at the highest levels in both major houses. The retail trade in art and antiques has seen some of its major players sink below the waves over the course of the last decade, and traditional venues have shrunk to sizes now minuscule, if they continue to exist at all.

Some have said that much of this has been the result of changing tastes, pointing out that so-called ’traditional’ material is less desirable than mid 20th century or contemporary. For those who think there may be something to this, I point out that the numbers of those dealers whose speciality runs to the more recent are themselves rather thin on the ground. In fact, I read just yesterday of one of the most prominent of their number ‘rationalizing’ their stock in trade through the sale of much of it at auction. Hmmm….

Amidst all of this, I see the growth and expansion of a number (by which I mean ‘plethora’) of companies whose sole focus is the sale of vintage and lower priced new and used items on the internet. Aided by sites like Pinterest and any number of TV shows on cable, that ordinary people can be their own designer and do it on the cheap has captured the greater public imagination- and significantly undercut the market for good and fine quality art and antiques.

Hugely testimonial to this phenomenon is the IPO last week of Etsy, which is now, according to Skate’s Art Market Research, the company with the largest market capitalization in the decorative arts industry. Do they offer what I sell? No. However, they do offer the thrill of online shopping. What we’ve found, whatever stripe of buyer, they all have a budget- not just for the purchase of a particular item, but overall. If it is $5,000, that can be spent on one item, or an aggregate of 5 or 10 items, but once spent, the budget is exhausted. Consequently, my prospective purchasers, if they’ve spent their money on Etsy, will always have less to spend with me, or any other member of the accredited trade. So, while not a direct competitor, the finite buyer budget now, for good or for ill, now has many more opportunities to dissipate itself.

Of course, so much of what’s purchased constitutes garage sale items of the (probably not so distant) future, but so what? In the short term, and for the foreseeable future it still functions, even obliquely as competition.