Author: Michael Chappell

The last couple of days have been taken up with travel back and forth to the family homestead in Fowler, a farming community in central California, just to the south of Fresno. Mother and Dad are fine, thanks for asking.

Although my trip was dutiful, the 7 hour transit time is made pleasantly productive as it exactly coincides with the length of a taped Wayne Dyer seminar derived from his book There’s a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem. I’ve lost count of the numbers of times I’ve listened to these tapes over the course of the last 8 or 9 years, and always find them refreshing in the rehearing. Certainly coming back to the galleries after having heard Dr. Dyer is the reminder that, spiritually, what one puts out one receives in return, and that’s what all of us in the trade in any of the decorative and fine arts, times being the way they are, tend to forget. For us, we are in this business because we love it, and love the items we handle- and love it when the purchaser is someone to whom our pieces speak. And, ultimately that’s what’s fulfilling about this business and, and, I’ll venture to say, makes a good dealer a better dealer- perhaps not as much in money but in largeness of spirit- that he has a love of what he does, and it is that love that sells a piece, possibly as much as the piece itself.

Of course, we have bills to pay just like everyone else, and our pieces do need to make the occasional one way trip out the front door to pay for our daily crust. But I have to tell you, although we may not be possessed of enough spiritual swag to change everyone’s attitude from negative to positive, we nevertheless, sometime with Wayne Dyer’s reminding us, love what we sell and what we do.

The short answer is, seemingly, everything. Certainly witness the phenomenal success of Picasso’s opus, just knocked down by Christie’s for $106.5 million to an as yet unknown buyer. While the Picasso has the distinction of now being the most expensive work of art yet sold at auction, the buyer has the distinction of paying the most for any work of art purchased at auction.

Combining the Picasso auction record with uncertainty in European sovereign debt, exacerbated now by the free for all following the British elections, there seems a profound disjunct that is as yet impossible to get one’s head around. Except that the records set- not only for Picasso but also for Matisse and Braque- were for artists and works well established in the canon. Buyers have turned their backs on contemporary art, except at the impulse buy level, making, it appears, defensive investments in fine art. English antiques cannot be far behind.

And why not? In uncertain markets, the traditional wisdom is to maintain liquidity so a significant investment in an illiquid asset might not make much sense. But with sovereign debt run amuck amongst nearly all countries of the world, in whose currency would one want to park a large amount of cash?

With the impressionist and modern sales occurring in New York as we speak, I would wager that it is more than just Christie’s and Sotheby’s whose breath is baited pending the outcome. No question, the Henri Matisse ‘Bouquet de fleurs…’ at Sotheby’s has the potential to be a record-breaker, but no one’s fortunes in the art and antiques world are made from the sale of one stellar item. Even so, trade sources are touting the possibility of the gaggle of sales in both rooms making in the $1billion range, and that should make even the most cash-strapped a bit more flush. Mind you, rents on the upper east side of Manhattan can rather quickly flatten even the fattest wallet.

My purpose in mentioning the spring impressionist sales is not, however, to comment on the fortunes of the major salerooms. It is that, for the art world, high profile sales are our equivalent of TARP money, with some huge dollars spent in any venue signaling to the larger art and antiques market that the bear is morphing into a bull. In the financial markets, Keynes referred to a change in perception as animal instincts, and while it would surprise me, albeit pleasantly, if the New York impressionist sales instigated a stampede of buyers, they might provide just the slightest nudge in the posterior of the too many still-hesitant punters. And we know you are out there…

Keith and I do not work well together. We do, most things, but when it comes to physical labor, our routines are not the same- I push when I should pull, and he the same- so as a consequence, Keith will set up our stand at an antiques fair with assistance from someone- anyone- other than my own good self. The trade in English antiques, as you can see, is fraught with domestic discord.

Keith does, fair to say, get the booth right, well, virtually all the time, and his placement of these mirrors was certainly clever. Of exquisite rococo form with warmly glaucous early period plate, while lovely seen straight on, Keith had them positioned so they could also be seen reflected in another mirrored piece, the doors of a George I bureau cabinet.  Masterful, but in a subtle way, as the brilliance of the mirrors was intriguingly modulated through the filter of the period glass fronting the bureau cabinet.

We are back, the truck has returned and the returning inventory has now been shoehorned into our galleries. The dust has, both literally and figuratively settled. We found the dust actually non-existent at the show venue, Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, as the weather was cold and damp. Make that very cold and very rainy. Doubtless couture choices were pushed into serious disarray for the gala preview.

More than acting as an erstwhile Mr. Blackwell, I sought less to critique wardrobe choices than assess interest in English antiques and fine art. Given our own selection of gear and that of our show neighbor Trinity House- and our prime position just inside the main entrance to the show- we had, pardon the immodesty, a great opportunity. To say that we were anxious to make an assessment after the economic morass that engulfed all of 2009 is an understatement. Although this has now become a cliché, we were unabashedly on the lookout for green shoots.

And maybe we found them, but not matured yet into the money tree. Or maybe they have. What’s apparent in our own gallery business is that everyone felt some sharp twinge in their pocketbook last year, translating into continued caution this year. You may read this another way as ‘no monumental at-show sales.’

But not to despair, because omitting last year, the Los Angeles Antiques Show, amidst the collectors, is heavily driven by the interior design trade. Purchase decisions have always at the show mostly been filtered through the designer, and the show just concluded will doubtless prove to be the same. We have always found the show a good source for follow-on business and consequently find it best to judge the success of the show with a sufficient time-lapse to allow plenty of designer-client-dealer palaver. Who knows? The money-tree may just have come in to leaf.