Author: Michael Chappell

What was announced officially yesterday was something that the trade knew for a while now- venerable dealers, and their own near neighbors in Knightsbridge, Hotspur and Jeremy will cease trading soon. Their remaining stock will be sold at Christie’s in November.

Doubtless trading conditions have been tough, but the principals of both firms cite as their reasons for closing that they are in their sixties, are tired of working 7 days a week year-round and would like to retire.

Based on our experience with even our short tenure in the trade, I am more than inclined to take them at their word. As much as we enjoy what we do, it is all-consuming. And in spite of general complaints about difficulty in current trading conditions, I don’t know, even in better economic times, when it ever was not all-consuming.

In what were, arguably, the good old days in the art and antiques trade in the early years of the last century, even the redoubtable Joseph Duveen, for all his elaborate sales and showroom apparatus, was essentially a one-man band. Although he had a worldwide network of ‘runners’ scouting items to purchase, it was largely Duveen who negotiated the deal. On the sales side, Duveen’s involvement was even greater. Virtually nothing closed without his direct involvement. As he made his peripatetic way from his galleries in New York to London to Paris, he knew, as his staff knew, that nothing of importance would occur unless he was there in person. It was a punishing existence that forced him to interrupt his schedule for six weeks every summer to ‘de-tox’ at one of the European spa towns. There were, of course, other Duveens in the business, but the patriarch was more than primus inter pares, and even the younger family members bit the dust before Joseph Duveen.

Depth and continuity of management in the art and antiques trade is a tricky proposition, and for successful galleries it has traditionally spanned generations. Duveen’s success was built on the two generations before him. I mentioned Galerie J. Kugel a couple of blog entries ago- they represent 5 generations, and Robin Kern of the aforementioned Hotspur is the third generation of his family operating the business. The why of this is hard to put a finger on. What I do know, however, is that the successful dealer must possess an encyclopedic knowledge about his particular field. He must not only know about the objects he represents, but must also have an exhaustive knowledge about the historical period from which they came. It occurs to me that, once acquired, knowledge about the business and the reams of auxiliary knowledge that must also be part of a dealer’s stock in trade is most successfully passed on to the dealer’s progeny who’ve acquired it by a constant exposure akin to osmosis. Although successful, even the best firms are seldom very large in terms of staff. They do, however, tend to punch above their weight, probably as a function of the high profile material they handle, and the high profile collectors from whom they derive their patronage.

Doubtless this note of affiliation with the great and the good has required that so many successful dealers traditionally were composed of the younger sons who, thanks to primogeniture, stood not to inherit but could at least take advantage of family connection to make a go of it in the art  and antiques trade. Now, it seems as if the sexier activity is hedge fund management, so the trade is bereft of a lot of its outside pool of staff support.

Frankly, lots of people who today might formerly have worked in the retail trade also find they have a home at the major auction houses. With their efforts to market their services to the retail buyer, the auction houses are much larger staff-wise than they used to be. The prospect of a regular paycheck, and regular working hours, are too good for the present generation of would-otherwise-be dealers to pass up.

The long and the short of it is, of the dealers we know, very few have involvement in the business save the present generation. Once the existing ownership decides to hang it up, the only prospect is to sell the storefront and consign the stock to auction. Unfortunately, this has happened fairly often in the last few years and the prospect is that it will continue apace. None of us in the trade are getting any younger.

Since I know that, of course, you are riveted to the computer screen taking in my blog entries as though they were divine emanations, my dozen or so readers will doubtless remember a few weeks back the discussion of the May contemporary art sales in New York. This last sentence sounds more of the snotty variety than the humorously ironic. It might be because the weather in San Francisco as I write this is uncomfortably warm. My naturally buoyant mood, given that the inside of our galleries is like a baking oven, seems to have been affected. In any event, the entry will be a follow-on from an earlier one, discussing the late June impressionist and contemporary art sales in London. Record-breakers, there, too, with Monet’s 1919 Le Bassin aux Nympheas, consigned from an American collection, selling for £36.5million to a private collector. One of the sources I’ve consulted said the European-based buyer was invested in ‘natural resources’ (read ‘oil money’) as the source of his wealth. Since it is a combination of Russian oligarchs and oil sheiks that are driving the top end of the market, one wonders from which yacht off Cap Ferrat or Corfu the telephone bid was placed. Presumably they are in a more comfortable spot than I am right now.

What’s apparent, however, is that it is, as with all other material, the best of the best that’s making record prices. Mind you, at Christie’s and Sotheby’s not much went unsold.

It isn’t too surprising that the most prominent work was from an artist, Claude Monet, whose best work, for a couple of decades now, has sold into the 8 figures. Strong selling prices, as evidence of market demand, are arguably as large a component of what determines canonicity as intellectual criticism. Having said that, one wonders what place would have been made in the canon for the work of Monet had it not been for the critical framework established by Roger Fry when he mounted and curated the first exhibition outside France of impressionist and post-impressionist work.
The point is, even when it seems to be immutable, the canon is not unchanging. Witness a painting by Gino Severini, a central figure of Italian Futurism, that sold for £13.4million at Sotheby’s during the same spate of sales. Futurist, as Constructivist, as Vorticist, and as, frankly, analytical Cubism, have recently not been as commercially popular as some other works. Perhaps it is because, aesthetically, all of them have an overtly period look,  with their angularity and flattened perspective, making them easy to place within the first quarter of the last century. As the Futurists celebrated modern machine age culture, it is not surprising that natural forms often have the appearance of machine parts. Of course, if it were not for the machine age, Futurism would not have become a movement at all. It was the technology of the high speed printing press and the publication in the mass circulation Le Figaro of what has come to be known as the Futurist Manifesto that brought adherents- writers as well as artists, together. They were able to read about and locate other like-minded souls in the cutting edge communication tool of the day- the newspaper. Unfortunately, the Futurist Manifesto also promoted warfare for its ‘cleansing’ effect of sweeping away the old order and also caught the attention of a then-nascent, ultra nationalistic political movement in Italy. From the get-go, Mussolini’s Fascist Party was strongly aligned with Futurism.

Interestingly, Gino Severini was not as highly political as his other colleagues, most notably Umberto Boccioni. In spite of his early embrace of Futurism, Severini seems through his career to have considered himself more closely aligned with Parisian schools, including Cubism and the Dadaists. As well, Severini, for whatever reason, tended to avoid representing overtly charged subjects that were Futurist favorites. As with his fairly tame Danseuse, the Severini lithograph in our inventory Arlequins will hardly evoke a strong, call to arms response in the way works by Boccioni were intended to. Although not so much fodder for art critics, it is possibly this easy on the eyes aesthetic that made for Severini’s good outing at Sotheby’s.

We began our annual summer sale a week ago, something we instituted in the summer of 2006, in order to stimulate sales activity, of course, and to rouse our clients and also our neighbors from their summer torpor.  While it seems to have worked with our clients, our antiques dealer-neighbors would rather, it seems, curse the darkness than, by way of linking with our sale, light one candle. Perverse, isn’t it?

I don’t know that there is anything particularly special about Keith and me, but we are believers in self-actualization. ‘Practitioners’ would be a better word, because we are given, when confronted with a difficulty, to give something a try rather than terminally intellectualize why solutions won’t work. Mind you, we are both of us rather reflective people, so don’t proceed headlong without a bit of thought, but, in the main, we do what we think is best, without seeking the good opinion of others. This is said with our summer sale in mind, which our neighbors have delighted in telling us for several years now will not work. Proof of the pudding, as the saying goes. I would personally communicate this to our neighbors- if I really cared what they thought.

Still, our desire to stimulate sales and drive traffic to Chappell & McCullar broadly reflects ours sales culture. Our annual summer sale is just one manifestation of our confirmed belief that it is imperative to stay in front of our existing clients- both interior designers and private collectors. As witness, as well, our commitment to do antiques shows, it is essential to not only make certain that when the client decides to buy, it is Chappell & McCullar that is considered first. Also, not all our clients buy all the time. We must at all times, therefore, add new clients.

What you may surmise from this is that we are fairly aggressive when it comes to marketing. There are those who believe that we needn’t be as,  given our selection of one of a kind type items, clients will seek us out. Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door, eh? Malarkey. Build a better mousetrap but fail to market and promote it and you will end up selling your better mousetrap prototype for peanuts to the guy who will clean up, because he knows how to promote and sell it.

When I hear our dealer colleagues crying about lack of foot traffic and lack of sales, I never hear them discussing internet inquiries and site hits. Astonishingly, a surprising number of even good dealers don’t maintain any sort of on-line sales platform. When it costs $20 to park one’s car in my neighborhood, and probably $75 to fill the car with gas in the first place, mightn’t one realize that the hoped-for gallery visitor is focusing their interests by conducting a web browse before actually venturing out?

Certainly, some other people whose forte is online marketing have cottoned on to the two factors just outlined- the comfortability with shopping for decorative arts online and, second, the antiques dealers who are not great online marketers. This confluence has stimulated the development of group dealer sites, offering a variety of items on one platform. What’s happened, however, is that the one site of several years ago has spawned imitators, and the sites themselves have become, shall we say, overburdened. They now offer so much material from so many different dealers, including jewelry and in some cases luxury homes for sale, that the sites have diluted their former focus as well as becoming difficult to navigate. As important as ease of navigation, though, is the  ability to properly showcase the best material, something we try hard to do on our website, providing thereby a bit of stimulus, as well as a preview, for the site browser who needs an extra visual nudge to become an actual as well as a virtual visitor.

As difficult as it has become to navigate some multi-dealer sites, Christie’s has even so mimicked the notion in their efforts to market directly to buyers. Teched-up, if not actually sexed-up, the site can be customized by the browser to allow a variety of specialized functions, including bidding. Still, Christie’s site has been transformed from one that was fairly simple that loaded quickly, to something complicated that loads so slowly that, horror of horror, one frequently will lose patience and close it.

I’m least of all a gearhead and don’t have the ability to critique online marketing with any degree of facility. However, frankly, that’s the point- simple, effective online marketing that is accessible by the non-gearhead has to be part of the dealer’s bag of tricks. The antiques and art buying public is still out there, in spite of our neighbors’ summertime complaints, and I would opine that the buying, through all avenues real and virtual, is greater than ever. What I believe the complaining dealer should realize is that he has probably fallen some considerable distance behind the technical curve.

We zoned out yesterday afternoon and watched a made for HBO movie on cable, ‘Bernard and Doris.’ Based on the last years of the life of Doris Duke and detailing her relationship with butler Bernard Lafferty, it was Keith’s choice. He often seeks, particularly on a Sunday afternoon, entertainments that he terms ‘mindless’, by which he means completely escapist.  However, with Susan Sarandon and Ralph Fiennes in the eponymous roles, I presumed the movie must have had something going for it. It did, as it happened- camp performances that must have been great fun for the stars to do, and some terrific interiors. I would recommend it.

Unfortunately, what’s not in the film, although it’s frequently mentioned, is Doris Duke’s home in Honolulu, Shangri-la. From what I’ve understood, this vaguely Middle Eastern villa complex was constructed during a phase of one of Miss Duke’s many enthusiasms- in this case, actually, a confluence of several- Moorish art and architecture, Hawaiian vacations, and surfing, particularly when it involved the developed physique of dusky surfers. How many enthusiasms is that? In any event, the outcome was an interesting architectural confection.

Interesting, but not really very successful. One of the magnificent inherent features of Hawaii is the beauty of its landscape. As it happens, my time living there in the late 1970’s spoiled me for a view in every place I’ve lived since. It is difficult not to wax eloquent about the view of the Ko’olaus that I had from my very first apartment, to the view of the West Maui Mountains from my house in Pukalani, a quarter of the way up Haleakala on Maui. My last permanent Hawaiian abode was on the ocean, with a view from Hilo Bay up to the northwest along the Hamakua Coast. Everywhere, extraordinary natural beauty.

It is a disappointment therefore, that Miss Duke didn’t take much advantage of the fantastic natural setting that her Black Point home affords. Although one can certainly hear the waves crashing along the rocky shoreline, there is precious little opportunity to see them unless one exits the house and enters the garden. Shangri-la, in terms of dwelling space, is largely a series of enclosed rooms- inward looking, with a surprising lack of vistas. I wonder why that is? Built in 1937 under the guidance of architect Marion Sims Wyeth, one wonders how much better the setting could have been used to advantage by Vladimir Ossipoff. His Boettcher house was built in nearby Kailua at exactly the same time, with its vistas all facing the ocean. As I think about it, the only significant ocean vista from Shangri-la is an oblique one obtained from the living room.

It is odd, now I think about it, how many, and how frequently, dwelling spaces of the period in Hawaii, even hotels where the natural landscape would be a selling feature, take little or no advantage of their sites. Continuing to use Honolulu as an example, our favorite home away from home the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, as originally constructed, made very little use of its site in providing views to the ocean and Diamond Head. Even today, the makai rooms in the original section of the hotel all have smallish windows that provide only a letterbox view of the ocean, and, at best, an oblique view of that most famous feature of the Honolulu landscape, Diamond Head. What’s interesting about the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and makes it similar to Shangri-la, is that it is likewise designed in an ‘alien’ architectural style. Its hispano-moorish architecture shows a clear stylistic link with its down the beach near-neighbor, Shangri-la.  Unfortunately, both show an indifference toward not only the natural setting, but any notion of an Hawaiian aesthetic. Val Ossipoff grappled with these issues during the entire tenure of his career, achieving some considerable, and enduring, success. While his Boettcher House and several homes in Kahala, particularly at Puu Panini, no more than a literal stone’s throw from Shangri-la, are as fresh and vital in appearance today as when they were built, Miss Duke’s residence is, visually, no more than an anachronistic survivor. I would venture to say it is, in the main, interesting largely because of the woman who built it.

In reviewing yesterday’s entry, I realize some of the information imparted, in an effort to simplify, is really occlusive. My error, an egregious one, was in contextually linking George III and Thomas Chippendale. The impression one would get thereby is that ‘Chippendale’ and ‘George III’ are synonymous descriptive signifiers for the decorative arts in the last half of the 18th century.

They are not, actually, and sorry to give anyone the wrong impression. Thomas Chippendale, a Yorkshireman who made good as a cabinetmaker in London, came to prominence in the reign of George II. Chippendale’s designs, or rather, the designs then fashionable that he employed himself and cribbed from others, then collected and incorporated into the pattern book that has come down to us as The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker’s Director is very much a compendium of rococo design motifs. This is where it gets tricky, though, as Chippendale’s name has become associated with motifs he rarely used, including the redoubtable ball and claw foot. Further, the period of his activity spans two great epochs in the decorative arts- the rococo of the middle of the century, and the restrained neoclassicism of the last quarter of the century. Consequently, using Chippendale’s name to denote a particular time and style in the decorative arts is hardly precise.

As before, identification with Britain’s reigning monarch functions as a better method.  ‘George II period’ works when looking at pieces in rococo style, as his long reign, from 1727 to 1760, encompasses the end of the baroque, the length of rococo, and the beginnings of neo-classicism.  As it is, England never embraced the rococo in the same way the French, Germans, or even the Russian imperial court did. Using a typical English case piece as an example, it is difficult many times to tell the carcase of a George II chest from completed decades later. While the carcase may be simple, often the mounts are over the top, with rocaille decoration that screams rococo. I can’t definitively explain the why of this. Given the huge quantities of alcohol consumed by the moneyed 18th century Englishman, it would be hard to argue for some sort of native sobriety that carried over into the decorative arts. As well, with every young man of fashion going on a year(s)-long Grand Tour of Europe as an essential part of his education, it certainly cannot be a function of an ignorance of continental European taste. Perhaps my readers may wish to weigh in on this question.

Images of rococo cabinet hardware from mid-18th century pieces are below. Click on the link for the main images of the ‘sober’ case pieces they go with.

Gilt-brass handle and backplate, with ‘C’ scroll and rocaille motif to the handle

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Gilt brass handle with backplate of ‘Raffle leaf’ design, the backplate and handle of linked ‘C’ scrolls

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Gilt brass handle and escutcheon- a mixture of the rococo and the neo-classical. The rococo phoenix on the handle appears about to consume the foliate backplates on either side. Both are beneath a neo-classical escutcheon in the shape of an urn, with a bell-flower swag

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