Author: Michael Chappell

The recession is over, so you know. That’s what the Fed is telling us, anyway, and making this determination using a variety of (arcane) measurements. My frontline assessment is conditioned by whether or not I’ve written an invoice today. When not, I am inclined to agree with my sainted grandmother whose folk aphorism, expurgated for the delicacy of my devoted readers, was that it is hard to appreciate the daylight when you’ve fallen into the privy.

With all that, we do seem to be clawing our way out- of the economic privy- although it is hard to tell in the antiques trade, with the epidemic of gallery closures hardly abating. The auction houses, which should derive some benefit from stock disbursals the result of closures, are yet in trouble, with relatively few buyers and not enough consignments to make operations profitable. But therein are the green shoots, actually, because amongst the dross, goods that are of fine quality and fresh to the market are garnering significant attention (read ‘selling for big money’).

This is the thing that we’ve seen all along, even in the darkest days, with the good goods selling, and the mediocre material just sitting there. This is hard for all of us to communicate to clients, who immediately assume that anything offered for sale, either privately or at auction, is necessarily a distressed sale. That has exacerbated already tough trading conditions, because our clients, who are in the market only when the spirit moves them, do not see movement within the trade to the point of vivacity if a piece is truly worthwhile. In spite of its overall decimation, trust me, there are still plenty of trade buyers out there. As a consequence, it is doubtful that a private buyer, either collector or interior designer, will even in this environment acquire a ‘sleeper’.

The better pieces are still, then, with alacrity being acquired for resale by the trade. What buyers need to consider is that, if the beige book is right, while one may not necessarily find a bargain out there, when the green shoots become in the fullness of time the tree branches of economic recovery, one might regret not having made a purchase right now.

What I hope people are cottoning on to, and what was sadly ignored as it was begun to be put about during our current economic malaise, is the notion of antiques as the ultimate in recycled goods. As we all of us begin to recover and feel a bit sunnier about the state of the economy, this is worthy of consideration, whilst also bearing in mind that all things ‘green’ may not actually be so.

If you are like me, ‘green’ and ‘recycled’ immediately call to mind someone in a beat-up pickup unsafely loaded with flattened fibreboard boxes, or a street-type pushing a shopping cart filled with dirty glass bottles. While notionally if not aesthetically similar to aluminum cans, and fibreboard, it’s worth noting the reuse of our antiques requires considerably less in inputs and remanufacturing to render them usable. Actually, very little is required, and mostly in the renewable elbow grease department- tighten the joints and a buff and polish- I am simplifying but you get the idea- and they are ready to go and will enjoy generations of service. Actually, with proper care, about 100 years of service, before another round of restoration is required.

I am put in mind of all this just now, as a lady and gentleman stopped in on Saturday, astonished at the (low) pricing of good quality period material relative to the reputedly good quality modern furniture they’d looked at the day before. Our stock is less expensive, yes, and of recognizably better quality. Of course, it would be, with the beautifully figured timbers and veneers, all derived from old growth timbers harvested 2 or 3 centuries ago, mellowed with a patina that likewise takes centuries to achieve. This, clearly, and we haven’t even begun to consider carving, joining, and other features of fine craftsmanship that are a given.

You have read all this before, in my blog and elsewhere, but what may make you feel even better about period pieces is a consideration that, when comparison shopping, a ‘green’ contemporary alternative may not be so. Even amongst ostensibly ‘green’ products made from sustainable materials, very few of these furniture pieces are made domestically, with most produced in the developing world. The upshot of this is, a considerable amount of waste ensues due to production using unskilled, unsupervised labor. One of the best and traditionally vaunted makers with factories formerly in High Point, North Carolina, now manufactures almost exclusively in Vietnam- and rejects for flaws in the range of 3 out of every 4 pieces produced there. And the rejects? Used as fuel. In fact the company is proud of its record for not using fossil fuels- in spite of the wasted product that ends up going up the smokestack and into the atmosphere.

To be continued…

With Partridge’s in the hands of the receivers and ostensibly looking for someone to acquire the business as a going concern, it looks like time has run out. As of last Friday, the only thing in Partridge’s windows on Bond Street were a roll of bubble wrap, the leftover bits from carting everything within off to a remote location.

What exactly is going on remains but will doubtless quickly be seen. Perhaps even the receivers couldn’t work to sell enough gear even to cover the cost of keeping the lights burning, cheaper, possibly, to remove all the stock, let what remaining staff there was go, and just maintain the street frontage.

While erstwhile managing director Mark Law, whose LBO of several years ago took the ailing 100 year old firm private, continues to make noises to the tune of buying the business back, and how its largest creditor Allied Irish Bank took precipitous action in seizing the firm a couple of months back, everything that’s happened makes it look like the business is done for. While I don’t believe that Princess Michael of Kent, in her honorific and now presumably former role as Partridge’s president, will have the bailiffs knocking at her door, this is at least a huge embarrassment, and for all the other high profile types, including David Mellor, that were involved in the business.

While near-neighbor Mallett’s, themselves also precariously on the ropes, have opined that the elimination of a major player in the English antiques trade might be seen as the removal of a competitor, no one, and that includes me, really believes this. A high profile failure in the trade, while we are all of us struggling to survive, can hardly be seen as a positive development.

In perusing an advance copy of a well-known shelter publication, Keith and I were pleased to see one of our furniture pieces featured, and all the more pleased that we were the only non-New York antiques dealer mentioned. Ironic, that with all the bloodletting in the art and antiques trade, and in particular on the island of Manhattan, it is still the nexus of the international fine art trade. Mind you, it is also still the Big Apple, with a huge concentration of big money buyers, and interior designers. Despite the loss of Concorde, New York remains a convenient jumping off point for those who may wish to enhance the reach of their collecting net by flying, privately of course, to London or Paris.

Or to San Francisco. While this will doubtless stir argument, no one in their heart of hearts really thinks of this as an art market city, but it is easy to get to, and get around once here. Consequently, we do have sufficient numbers of people transiting through- most of the time- to allow us to earn our daily crust.

And it is from ouslanders that most of our living flows. For whatever reason, we don’t do too much business with San Franciscans, and that includes Silicon Valley billionaires. Thinking about this for a moment, we do have one very good customer locally, a particularly well-known interior design firm. They do, however, spread their favors around, and trade in New York, too.

Given the dearth of local trade, it might be confounding that we do as much business as we do with New Yorkers. Well, not so confounding, really. What we see, every time we take a look, is the astonishing difference in price between what we are asking and what the New York dealers ask for comparable material. Although we bemoan what we have to pay for rent in Jackson Square, it is, while not paltry in comparison, let’s just say it is considerably less than what dealers pay for what amounts to only a bolt hole off 2nd and 3rd Avenues near the D & D Building, and, yes, paltry compared to Madison Avenue. Someone has to ultimately pay for this kind of rent, and if you hold a mirror up to your face, you will find out who it is.

There is nothing really secret about this kind of pricing disparity, with a number of our east coast customers flying out to look at pieces. The worst that can happen, assuming the piece is not to their taste, is they’ve enjoyed a pleasant weekend in San Francisco, with possibly a side trip to the Napa Valley. We are discreet about discussing this, however. My lesson was learned when making small talk with an occasional buyer, a stage and screen actress who makes her permanent home on the Upper East Side. When I opined about the vicissitudes of transcontinental commuting, she said, matter of factly, that she found it less taxing since she purchased her Hawker 4000. Well, yes…

While Keith and I fantasize about Chappell & McCullar as the ultimate destination for English antiques, we are sufficiently grounded to know that, without our colleagues in Jackson Square, we would be the worse off. As I think about it, no one in the trade ever believed they could long exist without other dealers adjacent, as testimony witness the longstanding international phenomenon of the antiques venues. Even in this day and age, collective websites make maximum use of the maximum number of dealers with the broadest range of goods to drive prospective punters to their sites and, hopefully, generate some online sales.

While our own website activity is brisk and it functions as an excellent way to maintain a catalog, I can’t really say that we have a lot of direct sales resulting solely from site visits. With that, nearly every first time visitor to Chappell & McCullar has browsed us online. Not surprising, given our tactile stock in trade, but for only a few exceptions over the course of the last few years, buyers have seen and touched, and then bought.

Our best promotional tool is undoubtedly our showroom space, but that space is enhanced immeasurably by those of our colleagues on Jackson Square. Some galleries are better than others, both in terms of material quality and aesthetics of presentation. All, however, are at least very good in their own way. More than good, really, as we frequently refer buyers to our colleagues’ places of business, and occasionally buy from them ourselves. And, occasionally, these favors are returned.

This makes Jackson Square seem almost bucolic in its sense of community, and, frankly, it is- minus, of course, any proximity to cows grazing in a meadow. We do, all of us, have a sense of common purpose, and realize we are dependent upon each other. Consequently, we arose nearly in a body to fight a sought-for zoning variance that would have allowed a currently vacant gallery to be turned into offices. We hope to have reached a compromise with the landlord, with the street frontage now to be used as gallery space, with the back portion used for office purposes. We hope the landlord has offered this compromise in good faith, as, times being the way they are, I have only sufficient patience to fight but once anything beyond the everyday battles.

But this recent experience got me to thinking. Certainly venues worldwide are having similar problems, reference my blogs about Bond Street and several blogs about poor benighted Mount Street, both of them decade’s old fine art and antiques venues, now taken over by fashionistas. Our present plight on Jackson Square, however, could potentially be markedly worse. While the incursion of other high end, albeit mass market, retail establishments may function over time to price out single location antiques and art galleries, they are still retail and contribute to shopping traffic, and at least in the short run will always bring browsers into the neighborhood. Office use, with the possible exception of the better interior design firms, will never do this.