Author: Michael Chappell

Not everything in the world revolves around English antiques, but that is my world, for good or for ill, and, consequently, the antiques trade has become my vector.

While the slow economy has certainly impacted the antiques trade, it has nearly wiped out our artisans. It’s simple, really- if we have not much custom, we require not much restoration. Beyond that, few of these folk, talented as they are, have little materially going for them but for their restoration talents. It is difficult, therefore, to go to the bank and ask for financing based upon skill in joinery, restoring paintwork, upholstery or metalsmithing.

Moreover, most of the people we work with would be unknown to us had they not been originally recommended by a respected member of the antiques trade. I don’t know of a one of them who even maintains a Yellow pages listing. Their custom is derived by word of mouth, and most of them prefer to deal with the better antiques dealers. The why of this is not too hard to fathom. When Chappell & McCullar requires restoration of an item- and they all do, frequently from a number of different artisans- we are very specific about what it is we want done. Keith and I have long, involved discussions with our trades people that include figuring to veneers, patination, pigment, historical context….the list goes on and on. The restorers like all this, and so do we, as critical discussion is central to achieving proper restoration.

That little established protocol exists for restoration is the primary reason why our restorers do not like to do work for anyone but serious dealers and the occasional serious collector. Realizing this, as frequently as we are asked to recommend a restorer, we rarely do. I know this sounds snotty, but the occasional collector would have difficulty in instructing the restorer, and if the ultimate job of restoration ends up being satisfactory to the collector, it is oftentimes a happy accident. More often, unfortunately, the collector doesn’t get what he wants, or thinks it is too expensive, or both, and both the collector and the restorer are angry, frustrated, and, the result of this failure to communicate, the restorer has to accept less money for his work than he deserves.

This year’s fair activity, at least in terms of attendance, has been brisk, with huge numbers flowing through convention centers in Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Palm Springs and Nashville. Sales?  Well, even the jewelry dealers are complaining- no one is even in the mood for a bit of bling.

Surprising, then, to hear that the Dubai fair will run again this year. Last year’s 45 dealer opus was something to see, with exceptional quality, and a lot of it, belying the small number of participating dealers. English antiques were represented by the redoubtable Mayfair firm of Ronald Phillips, Ltd. This year, English antiques will again be represented by Ronald Phillips, Ltd, but the fair overall has shrunk to just 30 dealers and one wonders what sort of show this will make.

Moreover, one wonders what sort of show it would ever make. With Dubai the Las Vegas of the middle east, those in Dubai for a bit of what they can’t do in more restrictive environments are probably not looking to make a significant purchase in the fine or decorative arts. At some time in the distant past, luxury goods dealers would outstation their material near to where money was being made, as the money making entrepreneurs were generally obliged to stay put. Nieman Marcus capitalized on this in 1920’s oil-rich Dallas, and even San Francisco’s own venerable luxury merchant Gump’s maintained a store for a number of years in Honolulu, catering to the wealthy sugar planters. Changing economies and the maturing taste of the luxury buyer obviate the need for retailers to be adjacent to their buyers. While accessibility is important, actual proximity is not.

Although I can’t cite any particular statistics, I will still go out on a limb and suggest that the concentration of private jets is higher in the Middle East than anywhere else on earth. For business use, well, sure, but these aircraft function just as well to ferry their owners to the couture houses of Paris or the auction rooms of London and New York.

Old topics are reintroduced in this blog, without the taint of cliché, since they are, well, topical. Canonicity is one of these topics.

Times being the way they are, we are asked from time to time- and with near 100% frequency by new clients- what items will be worth if resale should be necessary. We used to get this question a lot when we first opened- July 2002 it was- not exactly hot on the heels of the bursting of the dot.com bubble, but still close enough for discomfort. Chappell & McCullar missed out on the glory years of selling English antiques to the dot.commers, who, apparently, had huge amounts of money from the sales of shares in their ephemeral businesses.

The subsequent generation of big spenders, those in the last five years, have spent money on contemporary art, and, witness its recent performance in the salesrooms, prices have dropped like a rock- along with mid-century modern furniture. But, interestingly, Old Masters have held their own, and 2008 saw some records set for English antiques.

This, of course, is how the existence of a canon in the fine and decorative arts manifests itself. When others fade from popularity, objects that have consistently maintained their appeal declare themselves, no longer occluded by the fleetingly popular.

The fading interest in contemporary material has coincided with the fading fortunes of those who made it popular- and are now trying to dump what they paid a high price for. It’s funny- with the return in popularity of traditional investments (read ‘those where you can actually determine how the money is made’), traditional decorative material is what we find is now the receiving the most interest.

A couple of weeks ago, a Wall Street Journal article discussed the old Keynesian notion of ‘animal spirits’ as a significant element associated with the current recession. One would assume, expressing for a moment a nickel’s worth of economic theory filtered through a penny’s worth of zoology, humans as animals have responded to the economic downturn in the same irrationally contagious manner as cattle do when moved to stampede over a cliff.

Maybe, but interestingly, in our galleries we haven’t lately found any real expressions of panic. Yes, we ourselves have found one or two good buying opportunities in English antiques, but nothing that speaks of gotta sell. Mind you, we’ve never experienced any episodes of panic buying, either- even in the best of times, our clients’ vascular content seems to be composed less of hot blood than it is of ice water.

The animal spirit we’ve seen I’d more accurately liken to a deer caught in the headlights of a car, a phenomenon encapsulated in the phrase my partner Keith McCullar would prefer I stop using, ‘seized up’. I like it, though, and perhaps this is ego, because it removes the animal spirit and replaces it with the predictable rationality of the pistons of  a car engine stopping within the block because the motor has no lubrication.

Within this particular trope, confidence seems to be the human metaphor for lubrication, because, times being the way they are, we are finding plenty of people interested in our material, but very few confidently proceeding to the point of the sale. We aren’t even seeing any ‘bottom feeders’- people who make inordinately low offers on material, in the hope that we might sell out of desperation. Certainly, there is plenty of news about how dire conditions are, if not in the art market as a whole, then at least in the auction market. According to the New York Times, Sotheby’s and Christie’s both are reducing staff by over 10%. While both houses have realized a significant drop in revenue, this has more to do with decreased consignments than it does any drop in prices for fine and decorative arts. Consignors are unwilling to sell, of course, in a market where they are not confident of getting top dollar.

With a lack of confidence on the part of both buyers and sellers, the market has, well, seized up. The question is begged, naturally, what will turn conditions around? My car engine metaphor at this point breaks down, pardon the pun- maybe it doesn’t, if the mechanism of government intervention functions in the same manner as an engine rebuild, to unfreeze capital and restore confidence. Massive government intervention is as Keynesian as the notion of animal spirits. At this point, I invite my 20 or so devoted readers to pick their own metaphor, with the economic stimulus package either causing the crankshaft to turn, or the collective animal spirit to return to contented grazing. Simplistic, but, I admit, intellectually I have more in common with the painter Duncan Grant, Keynes’s great and good friend, than I do with John Maynard Keynes.

With international markets on their knees since early last October, it is a relief to find that life in the trade carries on. At least at some level, admittedly a less robust one- practiced understatement- than we’d enjoyed heretofore.

For the month of January, we wrote about as many invoices as we ever do, albeit for significantly smaller amounts than a typical January. As well, we’ve had a fair number of shoppers, both private clients and interior designers. These contacts are slowly- here I would insert the adverb ‘excruciatingly’ emphasized with a pronunciation performed between gritting teeth- developing, because, not surprising, people, while wishing to purchase, also wish to hold on to their cash. A case in point, we’ve been holding a set of 12 dining chairs in our back room for over a year- all paid for, pending completion of the client’s new home. It is complete, as of three weeks ago, but the client is reluctant to select fabrics and finalize selection of a dining table. I guess it’s TV trays for now (do they even still make them-?)or some such, as I know first hand that the client’s new dining room is cavernously empty.

Moreover, we’ve had the most overwhelming response ever to our last week’s new acquisitions email blast. Has it resulted in sales? Frankly, not too much, but what it has yielded are more inquiries than we’ve ever had, but nearly all of them hedged with ‘We’re not quite ready to decide, but would you mind giving me a price?’ This is unusual in our experience. When people start to talk money, a sale is likely in the offing, certainly with our private clients. For interior designers, our experience has always been that, unless they are shopping for clients (read ‘getting paid for it’) they don’t shop at all. I have to characterize all of this as the ‘it doesn’t cost anything to look’ phenomenon- believe it or not, an unusual circumstance in our business.

The high level of interest in our material, judged by gallery and virtual gallery (read ‘website’) traffic is matched by our friends in the trade who’ve completed shows over the last few weeks. The Los Angeles Art Show, the Winter Antiques Show, and the Palm Beach shows have all had huge numbers of people through them, but no forthright dealers can boast of any significant sales. My partner Keith McCullar talked himself hoarse at the Los Angeles Art Show, with a reported 30,000 people in attendance.

Show browsing as cheap entertainment? Yes, but so is going to the movies. Let’s wait for the follow on and hope that the large numbers of visitors will engender significant pent up demand for art and antiques. And, English antiques in particular.