DC

A surprising element of our business is the level of intimacy established with clients, resulting, as a consequence, in the requirement, albeit a greatly pleasurable one, of making house calls. Another fact of our business is how far afield our clients can be and, consequently, we have the opportunity to travel for no reason other than that clients wish to show us how they’ve deployed the pieces they’ve purchased from us, and seek our advice on future collecting objectives.

For the last week or so, the upshot of all this was an extended visit to Washington, DC. Discretion, of course, prevents me from discussing clients in specific, but the auxiliary facets of our business- meals out, gallery and historic site visits, were pleasant in the extreme, and a brief mention of some of these might be of interest to my loyal cadre of blogophiles.

Coincident with the soft-shell crab season, we were fortunate enough to enjoy each of us a fantastic meal of two each, pan fried, atop a bed of succotash at DC Coast. I often forget, coming from San Francisco, the bastion of nouvelle cuisine, that when one travels, one can experience what we term ‘big food’. Suffice to say, the meal was ample, with the freshness of the crab indicating that the poor creatures were doubtless alive not very long before they gave up the ghost to provide Keith and me sustenance. The succotash, so called, was a bed of sweet corn and peas very lightly sautéed in butter- seems simple enough, but it was exquisitely done, and the perfect vector for the pair of soft-shells.

One other feature- the bar. Rarely do we have anything other than our whiskey related standbys to precede a meal, but the bar at DC Coast really surprised us. The Manhattans that are our favorite tipple included, in addition to rye and a whisper of vermouths, bitters that absolutely made the drink. Angostura is perfectly fine and typically what we use at home, but the house made bitters, with, amongst other things, a bit more cinnamon than nutmeg and mace, made for a wonderful difference. Frankly, if I couldn’t have a meal at DC Coast, we’d go back just for a Manhattan at the bar.

DC Coast, 1401 K Street, NW, near Franklin Park.

Further on the Fair Season, 2011

My last blog entry engendered some response from dealers I know, decrying the fate of the fairs and echoing the open question I had closed with- what to do. Sadly, no one offered any particular suggestions on how to improve matters.

What was asked of me was why I thought the fairs were on the ropes, and in this respect I have an opinion, and you, my gentle blogophiles, by the fact of your reading this, perhaps can guess what the answer is. As with the retail venue, the fair is being displaced by the virtual venue. For those of you who keep track, and we certainly do, our gallery traffic is at best static, but our internet traffic- site hits, inquiries, unique visitors- increases nearly every month, and has seen a 40% increase for the month just completed compared to April, 2008. Do we have a corresponding increase in sales on the internet? Not exactly, but what I can say is that buyers who formerly traded only with us in our galleries now buy from our website. Put another way, once someone has stopped in and satisfied themselves with our offerings, they have then felt comfortable to buy online. More significantly, though, it is a rarity to find any first time visitor who has not prior to darkening our threshold browsed our website.

The problem with the fairs is that a prospective buyer who traditionally would attend to browse the offerings of a variety of dealers now has the opportunity to do so 24/7 on the internet. Where formerly it was the perception that, with the fair in town, that represented the window in which to browse and make a purchase, now no such time constraint exists. For all practical purposes, a virtual fair exists on the internet at the beck and call of the web browser.

Somehow or other, with tough trading conditions, the presumption seems to be that the art and antiques business is fusty and needs to rejuvenate, and I mean that literally, to attract younger buyers. Reading some of the advance press for a fair now recently completed made an elaborate point of this, with one of the organizers encouraging younger buyers to attend, and stressing that much of the offerings at the fair would be in a lower price bracket. The irony is that it is just that lower priced material that is more prone than anything else to being searched for on the internet.

In an effort to reinvent fairs, many have lost their character, redefining themselves as luxury goods venues, offering things like jewelry, wine futures, and classic, and new, cars. While the notion of this is to broaden the appeal of the fairs by attracting all manner of moneyed folk, it has the unfortunate effect, through its disparate offerings, of diluting the focus on art and antiques. What most people fail to realize is that, no matter how much of the ready any punter has, when they work through the fair entrance, they’ve already decided how much they plan to spend. The more that’s spent on bling, the less that’s spent on art and antiques.

The fair season, 2011

We’re fairly far along the fair season that traditionally begins with the Winter Antiques Show in New York, and for decades culminated with the London fairs in June, for decades the Grosvenor House fair, now sadly only of fond memory.

Other fairs have sprung up, but no venue seems to be doing much business. Attendance, save for the gala previews, is typically off. But galas do not very often engender sales, because galas are precisely that- parties with an elaborate backdrop provided courtesy of the art and antiques dealers. Mind you, was a time that the relationship between gala and dealer was, as it was originally conceived to be, a symbiotic one, with the partygoer almost invariably also a collector and, sufficiently fed and watered during the course of the gala, feeling good enough about his surroundings to splash out and make a purchase or three. This, for us, is the stuff of legend, as it all happened long before we came on the scene. In fact, we have only ever made one- count it- one sale at a gala preview.

Traditionally, shows were collector driven, but in the late 1980’s and through the first few years of this last decade, interior designers supplanted collectors. Consequently, when we entered this business, our marketing focus preshow was always to let the better designers know what material we planned to bring. A designer pack was always sent to them, replete with tearsheets detailing our better offerings, and sufficient passes to allow the designer, and such of their clients that might be interested, to attend gratis. Nothing magical in this, but astonishing the few numbers of other dealers that ever did this. And, frankly, it often paid off for us, as designers would shop the show, with clients in tow, and, if they didn’t actually make an at-show purchase, we almost invariably enjoyed some after-show business.

All this, however, is in the past. Of course, the financial meltdown of 2008 and the slow economic recovery haven’t helped the fairs, but one has to be honest and realize that fairs were very much on the decline prior to that. Our own success through 2008 was at best spasmodic, but generally the good fairs compensated for the bad ones. And, too, they are fun to do- the travel, the set up, the socializing with clients, and kibitzing with other dealers- it’s all great fun. But unless backed up with some sales, extremely expensive fun. We’ve never done a fair that, with all expenses totaled including personal travel, goods transport, stand rental and amenities, was ever less than $30,000, and some cost us considerably more.

What will rejuvenate the fair scene? That’s an open question and, to date, none of the new fairs seem to be anything other than the old fairs redux. A gala preview with a benefit charity, a lecture series, and attractive stands populated with good quality dealers- it’s a standard formula and lately, not a very successful one.

The Royal Wedding

A bit bleary eyed, arising at 2:30 to watch the royal wedding. Very quickly, let me just say that, to my mind, the wedding itself wasn’t particularly noteworthy, but the coverage of it was. Technology may have its detractors, but watching it all on my flatscreen TV, with the detail so crisp that one could count the paving tiles in the Cosmati mosaic of the chancel- or more distractingly the wild hairs in the eyebrows of the Archbishop of Canterbury- made this, for me, a wedding to remember. I happened to watch it uninterrupted on NBC’s ‘Today’, and the producers had a brain wave in adding former BBC commentator Martin Bashir to the panel. It was Bashir’s ‘there were three of us in this marriage’ interview with Princess Diana that was, for all intents and purposes, the end of the line for Charles and Diana. I don’t recall that Bashir had anything particularly noteworthy to say about the proceedings this morning, but his very presence gave weight and legitimacy to whatever anyone else on the panel had to say.

With all that, and looking beyond the interesting headgear of some of the ladies present, that the wedding was not particularly noteworthy is probably a good thing. I have to say, considering being constantly in the spotlight and despite the, shall we say, complicated domestic arrangements of his parents and the early death of his mother, Prince William seems a remarkably uncomplicated young man. And a young man who seems keenly aware of his role and responsibility. The 20th century hasn’t been easy for monarchs, with modernity at cross purposes with kings, leaving them these days rather thin on the ground.

The House of Windsor endures, though, as they’ve maintained just the right balance of regality and democracy, distance and personality, to keep them popular with their subjects. Something that Martin Bashir did say this morning, a recent poll indicated that 89% of the British public are, if not ardent royalists, then at least strongly supportive of the monarchy. For all the pomp and splendour, the royal family is not particularly costly, with the per person tariff to keep the family going running to only about £1 annually for each person in the UK. By the way, this is another Bashir statistic.

Yesterday on NPR, a British commentator mentioned how the royal wedding would be watched by so many people the result of our fascination with reality TV, with in her words, the royal wedding representing the ‘acme’ of the genre. I don’t think so, and not just because I find most reality TV shows, to put not to fine a point on it, repellant. The royal wedding, indeed the royal family, are popular because a fair bit of what they do conserves tradition- note that I said conserve, not preserve. Consequently, enough of what they are and what they do has a contemporary resonance. More important, though, is their service to tradition that forms a common touchstone, a reminder that what is arguably the best in all of us has been formed gradually and when and if modern life seems confusing, a remembrance of tradition allows us to regain our bearings.

So there it is, for me, and I suspect for most of us who got up at 2 this morning, a unique blend of the best of today, with the best of the past.

The Discount

Twice in as many days, we’ve had browsers in our galleries who, before even requesting specifics about the pieces for which they’d evinced interest, inquired about a discount. Frankly, when this sort of thing happens, and mercifully it happens now with ever less frequency, I know that a sale is definitely not in the offing. There was a time that outlets for designer type inputs- furniture, fabrics, plumbing fixtures- almost invariably offered some kind of discount, that basically functioned to provide a margin between a wholesale and a retail price. That said, I never felt our galleries functioned as a warehouse distribution center, so the notion of a wholesale discount always perplexed me. Lately, though, times being the way they are even wholesale merchants are happy to sell retail.

But this isn’t just a sign of hard, albeit ameliorating, times. The internet, and the ease with which a virtual shop can serve the needs of customers, makes shopping so simple that, where formerly designers and others shopped for their clients, now their clients shop for themselves. Additionally, in the art and antiques world, the proliferation of online databases makes it imperative that any retail gallery be price competitive. To mark something up in price, just to mark it down in order to provide a discount, will now result in a lost sale. Before my better collector clients reprove me for implying that price is what sells the better quality material, I have to say that not all our sales are to my loyal cadre of collectors. We do have the frequent one-off sale, and that buyer is invariably price sensitive. And before my loyal clients become too high breasted, I will remind them that they are, too. Bottom line- whatever you have, no matter how rare or fine the quality, it better be priced to sell.

Mind you, when we do have pricing discussions with clients, when the discount becomes the primary focus, Keith McCullar and I move toward, shall we say, palaver truncation. When the client, though, discusses with some degree of familiarity prices of similar pieces sold over the course of the last several years, that is a horse of a different, and very pleasing, color. This signifies that we have a knowledgeable collector who, along with price, will happily discuss the relative merits of pieces recently sold compared to a piece under consideration. For that buyer we have oodles of time. Note I said ‘buyer’, because that is what the astute collector is very likely to become.