In praise of the painted (and gilded)

af12012-0116What occludes the fact that Georgians loved their movables to be colorful is that so very little painted furniture survives. What’s often the only thing on offer through most dealers is dour, heavily oxidized- or in antique dealers’ speak ‘beautifully patinated’- mahogany and not to the taste of absolutely everyone. More’s the pity, as the notion that period furniture runs to one class of goods risks turning off a number who might one day become collectors.

I would venture to say that, during the 18th and early 19th centuries, painted furniture significantly outnumbered those pieces of mahogany, probably because painted pieces, made from common and vernacular timbers like deal, beech and oak and then applied with a splash of paint, were much, much cheaper to produce than those made from exotic imported woods. The brightly colored and high style armchairs pictured have frames of beech, seats of cane, and although finely decorated, the labor to perform the task was in the day the least expensive part of the operation. How times have changed. Even a dense wood like oak could be made to look light and sexy with the right sort of coating.

af02022-0116The George II period japanned coffer on stand is composed of thick planks of quartersawn oak that, while in themselves heavy, are fancifully decorated with a  red japanning that contributes a lightness that minimizes what would otherwise be the dark, glowering mass of the coffer.

The other feature of painted furniture, particular for seating, was that it was a cheap and cheerful support for something that was infinitely more expensive- its fabric covering. In this modern age of machine made fabrics, we’ve no notion of how extraordinarily expensive furnishing fabrics were 200 or more years ago.

af02015-0116All hand spun, hand dyed and hand loomed, the intensity of the labor involved to produce fabric made it immeasurably expensive, and the quintessence of luxurious display.  We’ve tried to replicate this sort of pairing on the sofa pictured, covered in an Italian silk lampas of 18th century design.

But what’s overlooked in all this is the simple fact that, though today mahogany can seem hulkingly overpowering, in its own day it was not. Crisply carved with a wash of red pigment to bring out its own ruddy color, mahogany furniture was very, very bright in a way that would seem garish to today’s collector. As well, the carved details were then often gilt heightened as an accent, witness the cabriole legs of this Chippendale armchair in the French taste.  This gilding, not surprising, seldom survives as it would wear away over time, or be stripped off as fashion changed.

af03007-0117The English sea victories over the Dutch who formerly dominated the trade in exotic woods gave England a corner on the mahogany market, which became, after about 1730, the favored exotic timber. Dense and colorful, often with beautiful figure, mahogany also takes wonderfully to carving- so much so that the beauty of the wood itself was often intentionally subordinate to the carving.

The George II gilded console pictured is masterfully carved mahogany- but also covered in a mixture of both oil- and water gilding to contribute tonal differences that heightened the carving’s three dimensional effect. We’ve done a bit of archeology on this piece, and determined that it was always gilded- the supreme luxury of an exotic material, extraordinarily wrought, and then finished with luxurious surface decoration.

af03027-0117Sadly, changing fashions, and ephemeral surface decoration, meant that most painted furniture even of the best quality, when nicked or damaged, was simply thrown away. Furniture made of the more exotic woods survived, partly because, as their surfaces were less prone to damage, they looked a bit better for longer than their painted counterparts, and partly because, higher priced initially, they were regarded as inherently more valuable.

The Downton Abbey bump

Like millions of others, I was glued to the TV this past Sunday evening, watching the further travails of the extended Crawley family and their retainers, in the redoubtable, albeit sanitized, Highclere Castle, now more familiarly known as ‘Downton Abbey’. I like the performers and their performances, and by and large find the setting and the situations, and their resolutions, believable and consistent with the day and age in which the characters live- sufficiently consistent, that is to say, to garner besides me an audience of historicists, heritage groupies, and those who just want to be entertained. I am a fan of Julian Fellowes who understands life amongst the great and the good better than anyone now writing, and if you want something that is thoroughly entertaining, read his novel Snobs of a few years ago.

No question, the interest in the series is a real phenomenon, and we’ve been asked over and over if its success has lead to a spike in interest in our material. Surprisingly, the answer is no, and the why of it is hard to fathom. Clearly, the interest in ‘Downton…’ is heightened by the accuracy of production detail lavished upon it. One would presume that this would spawn some significant stab made toward life imitating art. If it has, someone would have to point it out to me. We have had locally a British-themed restaurant open, but this has more to do with the local Brit ex-pat whose fortune made in the tech industry funded its development. But purchases of moveables, so far as we can see, in anyone’s effort to recreate their own personal homage to Downton Abbey has yet to take place. If we made a sale to everyone who inquired about a bump, we would indeed realize one, but so far, nothing of the sort.

We were sorry to hear of the death of a good friend and longtime family trading partner whose overarching presence in the raisin industry in my home town of Fresno made him something of a celebrity. I mention this as, in remembering this gentleman, of how often I had wondered why it was that, despite a burgeoning demand for natural and additive free food products, production, prices and demand for the excellent product that sun-dried raisins are has actually declined over the past three decades. As I was discussing this for the umpteenth time this morning on the phone with my father, he opined that it was a lack of consistent promotion within the industry to keep raisins in the mind of the consuming public. Possibly, but it seemed to me that, with raisins a consumable  known since antiquity, demand should proceed apace whatever the promotional efforts, however flawed.

‘Downton Abbey’ and natural sun-dried raisins- highly disparate one would assume. But in my mind, similar in that both have a niche that, while popular within it, should spawn some broader and expanding interest. But neither has done so, and in both cases, the why of it is any body’s guess. Perhaps my small but ever so loyal cadre of readers will have something to say, either about Downton Abbey or natural sun dried raisins. Who knows? That might stimulate a bump or perhaps two that, at least for me, will aid in providing my daily crust.

What passes as modern

We were pleased to be joined by a colleague for a smart drink yesterday post 5PM. Keith and I do this from time to time, often enough, one would presume, to identify some favorite watering holes. Unfortunately, those venues we initially identify as appropriate for a hang out designation frequently change staff, and bar menu, so what might otherwise be a comfortable spot becomes, sooner rather than later, unfamiliar, often with its pleasant characteristics shed. That this happens is an odd phenomenon, as I always feel that one’s core business is repeat business, but as with so much these days, the received wisdom is that frequent change is essential. Exactly why that is, I don’t know- we still believe that relationships are a necessary component of any successful business, and would be furious at ourselves if, changing for the sake of change, we ran business off.

As a consequence, we tried out a new spot, the lobby bar of the local branch of a well-known international chain of luxury hotels. We had been in before, not all that long ago, and while the food and service were adequate, albeit changed from our last visit, the décor was not. What had been in the last year a comfortable, cheery environment of overstuffed chairs and banquettes was changed to something that reminded me of the stock in trade of one of the furniture rental stores- angular seating furniture with black painted show frames, angular low tables with stone tops, and while the banquettes were still there, they were, as was all the seat furniture, upholstered in dour tones of black and gray.

Frankly, though, this mimics nearly all the lobby bars of all the local luxury hotels. Scotch that- the local branches of all the luxury hotel chains. Locally owned hostelries are not as abundant in San Francisco as they once were. And therein lies the tale, with chains of hotels going the way of every other mass market retailer of goods and services- every one copies everyone else and with such frequency that no one maintains any particular distinction for very long. We see this everywhere. As it happened, our cocktails out were preceded by a visit to the San Francisco Design Centre where we had remarked about the sameness of so much of the showroom material, any one of which, or all of whom, for that matter, could have supplied furnishings- with no variation in style or palette- to all the hotels. A funny story just occurred to me, about a gentleman in the antiques trade who said that when he looked across his shop he saw shiny surfaces and all of them brown. Mind you, all the same is no more interesting in period material than it is in contemporary, so our longstanding attempt in own gallery is to pleasantly interrupt that sea of brown with some painted finishes, gilding, and distinctive fabrics. However, when we looked across some of the showrooms we visited yesterday, it was not a sea of brown that we were greeted with, but one of a dull gray. Likewise the hotel bar- only relieved, but thank goodness it was, by the warm brown of my neat rye whiskey. Oh, yes- and Keith’s Manhattan.

‘Cheap is cheap’

midnightInParisCribbed from Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’, ‘cheap is cheap’ quotes the character Gil’s would be mother-in-law, an erstwhile interior designer, when Gil is taken aback by the multi thousand euro price for a pair of teak deck chairs at the Paris flea market. I was taken aback, too, at the ask price for something that, assuming they were actually period, should sell for maybe $500 each. But the point is made, that very often designer and collector haunts absolutely gouge their punters- whether locals or auslanders. That said, this propensity for gouging that seemed so long established a feature of dealers in the favorite venues has become something of an anachronism by the time Woody made the film in 2011. Still, the point is well made- some people will pay an inordinate price to be able to say that an item was purchased at the Paris flea market, or in the Cotswolds, or on the Via del Babuino. Not too many anymore, though, as the Cotswold dealers have become as scarce as hen’s teeth, and the Paris fleas sell items that so betoken a flea market that that becomes the overarching feature, decidedly detracting from what was formerly a good talking point.

Certainly the internet has become the great equalizer, with punters able to with very little effort see what an item should really sell for and as my few loyal blogophiles will have noted in my last blog, the panoply of items ostensibly similar has brought the asking price of everything down.

And down in every respect, including quality. In this regard, I think about a mass market retailer whose stores, website and catalogs have proliferated mightily in the last couple of years, with a fair old amount of their material offered as period in style. With a vaguely distressed look and soft furnishings covered in off-white linen and secured with darkened upholstery tacks, one might, if one’s vision were bad, think they were in fact making a purchase of a flea market item, distressed in finish as one would expect furnishings would achieve in the fullness of time. Not so long ago, we received one of their catalogs, which was, I was surprised to find, about as thick as the Manhattan white pages. Although artfully produced, what caught my eye immediately were the (cheap) prices for literally everything and, given the production quality of the catalog, those prices seemed to represent extraordinary value. I saw, for instance, a period appearing chair at a price fractionally the price of what we could produce a similar chair in our own workshop, which we need to do from time to time when a customer requires us to augment, say a set of 8 dining chairs when they may require a set of 12. In looking at referenced catalog, I thought, well, perhaps chairs from this catalog merchant might serve us as blanks.

That was my thought, until I had the opportunity to inspect chairs, and indeed all the merchandise, at the retail outlet, which, consonant with the catalog, was artfully arranged. The merchandise, though, was, to use a technical term, complete crap. Poor quality timber, poorly finished, and the joinery so badly done that we’d be unable to use anything even as a blank. Clearly, not quality, but temptingly cheap and appealing to those, and they are legion, who haven’t seen quality and are consequently hooked by ‘looks like but isn’t’ and reeled in by price. Well, as has been said before, cheap is cheap…

Disintermediation

In my former career in the banking business, ‘disintermediation’ was the term we used to describe the dwindling of the cash the bank held on deposit for customers, flowing as it would from time to time from bank directed investments- usually money market accounts- toward customer-directed investments. Hardly exclusive to banking, in simple terms the phenomenon would accurately be described as cutting out the middleman, and in these days of internet trading, disintermediation is an occurrence every retail merchant must be able to cope with.

I suppose the most immediate effect has been the shrinking bricks and mortar environment, with those merchants who represent a variety of product lines finding that their stores are used largely for display, with the shopper making the eventual purchase online and frequently directly from the manufacturer. For the rest of us, particularly in the art and antiques world, where our stock in trade is not just distinctive but in most cases unique, one would presume this wouldn’t happen. However, as a friend and colleague whose speciality is decorative boxes pointed out, his competition for sales can come from bizarre places, Target being one of them. Although we wish it were otherwise, not all of our prospective customers are of shall we say a connoisseurial bent. Say for instance one sought a Regency period decorative box to use to discreetly store the TV remote- this is a common contemporary use!- highly likely one will come up with something in period style and, viewed on the screen- or more frequently these days the iphone- the style example for $26 will look just the ticket, and the $2,600 period example, albeit fairly priced for what it is, will be given the go by. But more than that, when searching online, the browser will be met with a panoply of different items, far removed from what might have been the focus of their search, and like as not their ultimate purchase itself equally as removed as the apple is from the orange.

That’s a lot of the problem the trade faces, with internet shopping largely determined by the key words merchants include to describe their products. Nothing governs this, and the result is a fragmentation of the customer’s online search, carrying them very far afield from what it is that they originally had in mind when the search was contemplated. But even when the search remains relatively focused- using the Regency box example- price shopping becomes the order of the day, and the independent merchant in the antiques trade finds himself competing head to head with mass market merchandisers. And the result? The better capitalized merchant will survive, and the independent merchant will go the way of the buggy whip.

With the struggle the trade continues to undergo despite the improving worldwide economy, the general presumption- or at least the opinion we’ve heard most often- is that tastes have changed, and there’s less of a passion for period material. We tend to discount this, as our buyer demographic has remained basically constant since we established our retail gallery nearly 12 years ago- the buyers are basically the same age, in the same lines of work, and in the same geographic areas. What has changed is the increase we’ve experienced in the online, price driven ‘spot’ buyer of less expensive material- people who are unlikely to ever darken our gallery threshold.
What all this leads me to believe is that the online sales phenomenon that is quickly displacing bricks and mortar, is also fragmenting the dollars normally spent on antiques. The disintermediation that is an inherent feature of online purchases also exposes the buyer to a dizzying panoply of items to purchase. What might be assumed to be, with an improved economy, more money to spend on antiques, is, to the detriment of the antiques trade, hugely fragmented by a disproportionately larger number of items to spend that money on.