Author: Michael Chappell

We took a busman’s holiday yesterday afternoon. Yes, the afternoon, at leisure, the two of us, much to the delight of my nephew and gallery colleague Jack Tremper, who gets to see more than he’d like of Keith and me.

The glories of our business, we never take time off, or seldom anyway, and when we do, we do things that are related to what we always do. A movie, yes, but not having had enough of the beautiful people who form the core of our business, we saw them distilled to their very essence in ‘The September Issue.’ For the benefit of those of you fashionistas who’ve been on a desert island for the last 6 months, the documentary is entirely devoted to the production, from concept through design and execution of the ‘big’ issue of the year for Vogue. Although most reviewers have focused on Anna Wintour, devil theorists may be interested, if not disappointed, to find that the magazine’s creative director Grace Coddington figures nearly as large. Moreover, though Wintour is the lightening rod, Coddington makes it happen.

We may be stepping way up in class, but I mention busman’s holiday in that, in our own little creative sphere, we are always interested to see how someone else does it, and what we might learn thereby. Given that we spent two hours in our workshop with our cabinet maker and a client this morning solely for the purpose of finalizing the carving on a six square inch area of a chairback- this is God’s honest truth- we have something of a feel for how subtle, tediously collaborative, and downright fiddly the creative process is.

While Wintour is famously regarded as less than warm, the people we know who are friends of hers are, incongruous as this seems, warm and friendly. I was therefore also keen to consider how she came across on film, and how that might then articulate with her relationships with others. In my own life, those people with whom I’ve established lasting friendships are those whose acquaintance, at first face, I didn’t particularly care for. Outspoken to the point of brusqueness seems to be a common feature of most of my nearest and dearest. My devoted readers may, or may not, find that this is a central feature of my own personality- or so Keith tells me, ad infinitem. With Anna Wintour, I found plenty to admire. Outspoken, but hardly loquacious, decisive, and confident in her own vision. In a business as fickle as fashion, who can argue with a vision that has yielded her successful 20 year tenure? And what a synchronic partnership with Grace Coddington, likewise outspoken, but friendly in a way that gets the most out of the no-doubt maddeningly fickle creative types whose constant and always disparate inputs are daily essential and concomitant feature to the running of the magazine.

It is this central constancy, in my opinion, that people find- well, I’ll say it- endearing. Knowing what to expect, face it, is comforting where erratic is not. With Vogue as the ultimate expression of the vision of Anna Wintour, while it may be exciting, it is never, as its readers comfortably realize, ever erratic.

A youngish couple, embarking on a family, purchasing a new house- and one of the component pieces of this confluence of events is a stop in our galleries. With the initial purpose of looking at to purchase a painting or two, this visit has then segued into a larger discussion about long-term collecting objectives.

This is the second time within as many weeks we’ve had someone pleasingly describe their experience with us as ‘one stop shopping’. Who coined that phrase, anyway? While we don’t consider ourselves anything like a supermarket, a supermarket analogy is not entirely misplaced. Where one trades is not just a function of convenience, but as much about shopping where one can expect to get the types and quality of goods one wants to acquire- at a price one wants to pay.

Will that price be a bargain? I doubt it, because if it were, we couldn’t carry on in business. Will it represent value for money? As much as we can possibly make it, yes, because it is the relationship Keith and I seek in every sales transaction, with the client recognizing not only that he has purchased something priced fairly but that it also includes a fair profit for our gallery.

And, of course, that is the nature of a lasting relationship, where it carries on as it is beneficial to both parties. For those who seek to deal with our gallery in the manner in which the invading army relates to the young maidens of the town, one will find us, shall we say, less than compliant.

Keith and I were pleased to attend last night’s preview of the second annual SF 20 Modernism Show.
Frankly, the show is a huge improvement not so much in quality but certainly  in style over its maiden outing last year. The returning and the new dealers endeavored to make this a serious show, with new dealers including, a fortunate example, San Francisco’s Hedge. Opting for SF 20 over next month’s San Francisco Fall Antiques Show, they really put shoulders to the wheel. Their centre of the show pavilion, formed with both interior and exterior walls composed of weathered barn lumber, was perhaps the most striking of the entire show. This, coupled with interior designer and Hedge co-owner Steven Volpe’s entrance vignette, resulted in both designer and gallery forming a nearly overarching at-show presence.

Another notable display, and I am trying to overlook my personal biases because they are friends of ours, was that of Downtown, the bicoastal gallery of David Serrano and Robert Willson.  Chic, no question, but with the inclusion of soft furnishings in a room vignette, one can project oneself easily into the setting- perhaps what I might term elegantly domestic.

Downtown’s near neighbor at the show, Habite, is also their near neighbor in Los Angeles. Though great to see owners Laurent Rebuffel and Kimberly Denman, a bit of wistfulness is mixed in, too. Laurent is closing his San Francisco location, and consolidating his stock in their showroom on La Brea in LA.

The great and the good were all there, but a significant cadre of interior designers- great, good and beautiful- were on hand, too. Designer presence was doubtless bolstered by the active involvement of preview designer chairman, Douglas Durkin.

With SFMOMA  as the beneficiary of last night’s gala, the show is certainly given further legitimacy by the generous support of the newly launched Modern, an editorially serious quarterly from Brant Publications, whose other magazines include Interview and The Magazine Antiques.  Gregory Cerio, already well established as a journalist of note in New York design circles, is editor in chief, with Greg in attendance last night and through the run of the show.

The show runs through this Sunday, September 27, at Herbst Pavilion at Fort Mason.

Local luxury goods retailer Gump’s will this evening be hosting Charlotte Moss, who will be giving us an illustrated lecture about her notions of design and style. As well as interior design, Moss has been in the lifestyle boutique business for nearly 20 years. While some come and some go, that she has survived, and that Gump’s has, too, for that matter, is saying something.

Glib but not lightly meant, as staying in business while maintaining a freshness that impels the customer to return is the most difficult of difficult balancing acts, requiring the careful reinvention of one’s style and aesthetic balanced with the right degree of constancy. While one builds a loyal cadre of buyers, not all buyers buy all the time, with a goodly number dropping right off the twig. But the secret is to add new buyers at a greater rate than normal attrition, and not enhance that attrition the result of unpleasant changes in presentation or product mix. And not just the wrong products, mind, but items that do not quite articulate with one’s core business. Even in our own little English antiques sphere, we’ve felt our way along gingerly, finding it essential to mix in 20th century items, both artwork and furniture, and even going so far as to offer our own range of bespoke modern pieces.  For us, this has mercifully proven a successful blend, attracting new private and interior design clients who seem to like our look, while not putting off the existing clients whose purchases are almost exclusively period material.

With all that, what has been difficult for Keith and me to get our heads around, venal souls that we are, is that a lifestyle boutique will only appeal to those who share the vendor’s aesthetic vision, and that will amount to only a fraction of those who darken the front door- or browse the virtual store online. And of those, fractionally fewer will actually make a purchase. The temptation, I suppose, is to broaden the appeal of one’s merchandise, but that’s about the riskiest proposition there is. An overly broad mix of products dilutes the impact of one’s signature merchandise. Also, the broader the range of products, the broader the number of competitors, and we all seek to stand out.

No question, Charlotte Moss seems to have got it right. By the way, another prominent guest this evening at Gump’s will be my good friend Diane Dorrans Saeks. With her own lifestyle blog Style Saloniste, Diane does an exemplary job keeping San Francisans up to the mark.

While the mania for mid-century modern design may be somewhat in abeyance, it has by no means gone away. I am put in mind of this in light of the second running of the SF20 Show running at the Herbst Pavilion at San Francisco’s Fort Mason this coming weekend. With most of the participating dealers having come from outside the local area, I certainly hope the show proves worthwhile. Whilst we normally gauge our own success at a show by reviewing sales up to six months after the show is over, times being the way they are, some significant at-show sales for the participants would not, I’d venture, be found amiss.

Given that modern material is sort of off the boil, I don’t believe that will actually result in slow sales. Selective sales, more likely, as what we’ve noticed is a pronounced movement back toward the center amongst both collectors and interior designers, with the simultaneous and eclectic utilization of the best modern, contemporary, and period material. The show preview will benefit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, but as I review the list of show underwriters, some very significant local names stand out, including a client of two of ours, who we know for certain are broadly eclectic in their taste. And why shouldn’t they be? Certainly in the decorative arts, good design is good design, regardless of period.

That’s certainly what I look forward to seeing at any show, good design. Cutting edge? Well, possibly, but the show is really geared, or should be, to be accessible to those who may not be familiar with the material on offer. Mind you, I’m not suggesting the show should be composed of 1950’s kitsch, although a smattering makes for some fun, but excellent quality Italian and northern European design from the same period would not be amiss. Who’s not going to understand or be put off by Wegner and Gio Ponti? Eileen Gray? Well, possibly, but we’ve all seen too many knockoff Bibendum chairs.

What I’m saying is that there is nothing wrong with material that allows the early-stage collector to sort of ease into the acquisitions mode. Too often the presumption is that price alone is what determines a willingness to purchase. I suspect that pitching the note a bit too high up the collecting scale might with as much frequency also function to de-incent sales. It only stands to reason, doesn’t it?, the more arcane the design and designer, the more commensurately rarified become the buyers.