Author: Michael Chappell

In terms of local San Francisco demography, Giants fans together with those who planned to attend the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show takes in pretty near everybody in town. There may be one or two asleep in doorways along Market Street who are generally indifferent, but I wouldn’t make book on that, either.

Of those handful of people in the western hemisphere who did not watch Brian Wilson throw the final strike in Saturday night’s game, a majority of those few might have been antiques dealers scheduled to participate in the fall show tortured as they were by the prospect of the Giants going to the World Series. As it happens, Game One exactly conflicts with the gala opening of the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show. Will the World Series affect attendance at the gala? Well, what do you think?

Star crossed seems to describe the significant West Coast fairs this year, with the Los Angeles Antiques Show this past April affected by the 7 mile high ash plume of an Icelandic volcano- remember all of this?- that delayed flights by days, and consequently delayed some European dealers and their stock in trade from setting up in time for the gala.  It was a near thing, but in the end, everyone got there, got set up for the balance of the show, and at least one of them- Elliot Lee from London- had a stellar show. As the sportscasters say, perhaps with more color, it isn’t over until it’s over.

So with the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show. No question, strong attendance while not promising a strong show, certainly improves the odds. That said, the World Series will affect most prominently the gala preview- there will still be plenty of non-game time during the succeeding four days of the show’s run for anyone to attend the show that wants to. Anyone can say what they want, but significant sales during the preview are as unusual as Tim Lincecum with short hair. The preview is first and foremost a benefit for the sponsoring charity-  the dealers’ show stands provides an elegant backdrop for what is, ultimately, a party. Mind you, the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show and its benefit charity, Enterprise for High School Students put on to my mind the best of the best when it comes to parties.

Still, the Giants in the World Series is the big news and Keith and I can barely stay seated, excited as we are to watch Game One, planning to close early on Wednesday to get home to watch on TV. For those of my loyal cadre of readers who know how venal we are, this amounts to a rare, albeit ecstatic, level of commitment. And who knows? The Giants aren’t the only team in the series, and we are liberal minded- our galleries, and the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show, will happily welcome Texas Rangers fans.

Syrie Maugham was and remains an influential designer from a time replete with ‘society decorators’, including Sibyl Colefax, Nancy Lancaster, and Elsie de Wolfe. Sadly, little but a photographic record remains of Mrs. Maugham’s work, nicely showcased just now in Pauline Metcalf’s monograph, newly published by Acanthus Press.  No one in the world of design does not at least claim to know about Maugham’s ‘white on white’ room treatments, revolutionary in their departure from the gloom of late Victorian and Edwardian decorative schemes. For those of us who love early ‘30’s cinema, one cannot help but be reminded of Mrs. Maugham when watching Jean Harlow lounge in her white on white bedroom in the 1933 ‘Dinner at Eight’.  As Metcalf surmises, set designers Fred Hope and Hobe Erwin doubtless considered this the height of chic and a clear encomium to Syrie Maugham.

As an antiques dealer whose trade is dependent on collectors, it is hard for me to endorse what use Syrie Maugham and others made of period pieces, with so much original finish stripped off and left plain, pickled, or painted white, with connoisseurship subsumed by chic. None of this is too surprising, though- as her designs marked such a break with the past, a thoroughgoing iconoclasm that extended to period furniture was probably to be expected. With all that, Maugham embraced contemporary makers and always included modern pieces in her designs.  The comfortable eclecticism that we now embrace certainly finds one of its most prominent early proponents in Syrie Maugham. As she was popular and consequently a popularizer, one wonders about the level of success of Jean-Michel Frank or the Giacomettis without her patronage.

Though competitors, Maugham was yet friendly with her contemporaries, indeed was a near neighbor to Sibyl Colefax, and travelled through India with Elsie de Wolfe. Not surprising, then, that some clients and design elements would overlap, with some commissions hard to distinguish, certainly between de Wolfe and Maugham. It was a surprise to find, in Maugham’s Palm Beach project for the Harry Payne Binghams, art moderne dining chairs identical to those we had acquired from de Wolfe’s Los Angeles commission for the Countess di Frasso.

We’ll admit, Chatsworth and Spencer House may be more vaunted- what you’d expect with several centuries’ head start. But you will certainly find some exquisite pieces at Chappell & McCullar, from history’s best makers- William Kent, Pierre Langlois, Gillows of Lancaster, François Hervé. In a word, extraordinary. Please find a selection of wonderful pieces, all currently in our San Francisco gallery.

Don’t forget to browse our website, www.chappellmccullar.com, where you will find a large selection of our other extraordinary pieces.

Of course, we welcome your inquiries, and delight in your purchases!

With warmest wishes,

Michael James Chappell & Keith D. McCullar

Presumably there must have been some ducal dust on the ‘attic’ items from Chatsworth, certainly on those bits and pieces salvaged from Devonshire House, demolished nearly 90 years ago and gathering, well, you know. With the sale now history and with a sale total of nearly £6,500,000, it will be interesting to see what further spruce up Chatsworth might experience.

Also of interest will be the unfolding deployment of items purchased at the sale. The trade was in evidence, but in the information age, nothing is secret, so it will be a particular feat to see how a dealer could make a purchase as prominent as at the Chatsworth sale, mark it up and then offer it for sale. There was a time when country house sales were six in a weekend and goods were cheap, a dealer could buy an extraordinary item or ten, salt them away for as long as a decade, and then bring them out, fresh, as it were, to the market. No one in the trade, I’m afraid, has that long a purse any longer, and items are almost invariably offered as soon as they are shop ready. That said, the Chatsworth sale commanded extraordinary prices and one can only conclude much of it was driven by retail punters, making if not a once in a lifetime, then a once in a decade purchase.

This week’s ‘attic’ sale at Chatsworth naturally enough puts me in mind of the phenomenon of the country house sale. I’ve been lucky enough to attend some fascinating sales over the last 15 years or so, and it might be as much for the opportunity to look within some extraordinary houses as to have the chance to acquire the contents. Prominent among these are Hackwood Park, with its exterior designed by John Vardy and its interior replete with surviving Vardy designed furniture, Adam designed Dumfries House, with its welter of Chippendale furniture, hardly moved since it was installed in the 1750’s, and Easton Neston, the seat of the Lords Hesketh, one of the most exquisite of all late baroque houses.

Dumfries, of course, was one of the most famous sales that never happened, with the Prince of Wales swooping in at the last moment to save both the house and its contents for the nation.  Given my vocation, one might ask what treasures we were able to acquire from any of the other house sales. The short answer is, not a stick. The why of this isn’t too hard to divine, either, as the notion of buying something exquisite from a country house always brings out all of the county set, all with the same objective. Consequently, whatever sells, sells well. Interestingly, the Hackwood Park sale in 1998 was right in the midst of a raging bull market- and, pardon the cliché, at the height of the dot.com boom- and attracted London city types hell bent on making a purchase. Well, that doesn’t include me, who has to make acquisitions at a price that allows me to sell at sufficient profit to allow the occasional purchase of groceries.

It was at the Hackwood sale I first noticed, with the bursting of the dot.com bubble, how much of the material purchased that came back on the market, selling at prices significantly below those achieved for the same items at the original auction. Presumably some of the dot.com/City types needed to buy groceries, too. As much as anything, this kind of phenomenon should serve to demonstrate that the more prominent and inviting the sale, the greater the buying frenzy, and consequently, the less likely one is to acquire something at a fair, much less a bargain, price. That is probably understated- for anything of any quality, the buyer will doubtless pay through the nose.