notes

David Moss reports that Masterpiece London has a full compliment of luxury goods dealers for its inaugural show, running from its preview night on 23 June through 29 June. This fair, organized by a number of the leading lights of the late, lamented Grosvenor House, should be an improvement in a number of ways, most notably with the huge marquee at the Chelsea Barracks venue dwarfing the cramped space of the Grosvenor House grand ballroom. This sounds sort of a simple thing, but I find that nearer to Knightsbridge a good thing, too, with the fair a short stroll down Sloan Street from Harvey Nichols, or a hop and skip from the Sloan Square tube station.

Despite a number of familiar names, the overall juxtaposition will be a profound change from Grosvenor House, with the theme of the fair luxury goods. Jewelry and the best in new bespoke items will be on offer, mixed in with fine period decorative arts. Heavily mixed in, I should say, as the overwhelming furniture component that was the mainstay of Grosvenor House will not give way, exactly, but certainly make room for a broader selection of material. This makes considerable sense, to my mind, as a new look with a different range will doubtless attract a different type of buyer, and hopefully more of all types.

Mind you, the changed fair, while it attracts new buyers, might run the risk of running off traditional punters looking forward to seeing, albeit different pieces, something typologically similar from year to year. Perhaps, but, frankly, with the bright new look of the fair, I suspect that attendance will be strong if for no other reason that the fair is brand new. Once in, though, with a vision of how brilliantly the new venue promises to showcase all types of material from all periods, whether an early 18th century walnut bureau or a 1960’s Cartier sparkler, the Masterpiece fair will be assured success.

We’ve wound down our Jump Start sale, with this coming Monday the last day. The ides of March? No oracular visions, so we did not beware. If anyone else had presentiments, they ignored them, too, as the sale has been pretty well received. There are, I am happy to report, a fair number of buyers of English antiques abroad in the land.

What’s interesting, too, is that our buyers seem to be of a pleasing demographic, falling into what a decade ago was termed the X generation. As I recall, they were, as a group, characterized by disillusionment with the materialism of their baby-boomer parents. Club culture at night, and slacking off during the day does not seem to mesh, however, with the body of our younger collectors.

But, then, it occurred to me that our cadre of collector customers all share a similarity of interests, and that age doesn’t really signify. What does, though, is the commonality of purpose that the word ‘collector’ implies. Keith and I started out as collectors, and our galleries are the ultimate expression of our own collecting bent. We can, therefore, through discussions with us allow someone not less passionate, but perhaps less acquisitive than Keith and me to benefit from our avocation. It’s interesting, having a word with a colleague in the antiques trade yesterday, he opined how well off a collector is that links up with a dealer with whom they feel comfortable, as that dealer will put in front of them in short order items that the collector, on his own, may take years to find.

And, frankly, Keith and I do that nearly every day, suggesting items to collectors. We speak to a certain few collectors weekly, and some almost daily. It is a joyous interchange, I can tell you.

I had a pleasant chat with a young lady, a talented instrumentalist who plays for several orchestras in the Midwest, wherein we both decried the lack of funding for the arts, particularly outside major urban areas. The NEA and the NEH, with woefully limited budgets, provide grants where they do the most good for the most people. Consequently, funding tends to puddle in only the biggest cities who also are possessed of a larger donor base, both corporate and individual. Where the arts in San Francisco, say, are relatively well off, her near neighbor, poor, benighted Fresno, has recently had one of its major museums closed.

Native Fresnan that I am, it is therefore with profoundly mixed emotions- none of them happy- that I consider the closure of the Fresno Metropolitan Museum. On the one hand, considerable sadness that Fresno is bereft of an institution providing a vista on world culture to the hundreds of thousands locally who cannot visit museums 200 miles distant in Los Angeles or San Francisco. And, the other predominant emotion, anger that museum management and its trustees so egregiously betrayed their responsibility to the community that they allowed a 100% cost overrun on the restoration of the museum, and then, when the money ran out, with monumental hubris key trustees inveigled city authorities into guaranteeing a massive loan upon which the museum defaulted.

The Fresno Bee has over the course of the last couple of months published a number of articles detailing what led up to the loan default and the museum’s ultimate closure this past January. The size of the museum fiasco doubtless prompted a grand jury investigation, the results published today. It makes for interesting reading, particularly if the phenomenon of wrist slapping sets your juices flowing. It is disappointing to find that the report itself masters only the obvious- that the City of Fresno did not employ sufficient due diligence prior to recommending the city approve the museum’s loan guarantee- and falls short of identifying culpability on the part of both the city officials and the trustees whose apparently back-room deal led to the local community holding the bag. It’s interesting, the grand jury report tells us the museum’s ultimate plan for repayment was from voter-approved bond financing. Sure, and I’ll repay my balloon mortgage payment from winning the lottery. What’s sadly ironic in all this is that doubtless at some time before the excreta hit the fan the city must have had the opportunity to step in and administer the museum. Now, of course too late, the city has a derelict building and the community has lost a critical cultural outpost.

With the bulk of foundation, non-local and NGO arts funding concentrated in the major cities, Fresno of necessity requires the diligent engagement and oversight of the local community and its elected officials to ensure the support of the arts and culture. Note that I said ‘local community’ by which I mean to exclude the unnamed ‘community leaders’ cited in the grand jury report. I hope the Fresno Bee continues to investigate those leaders. A small cadre of names will emerge, whose strange and mystical relationship over the years with arts organizations has guided a number of them into peril and near collapse. I hope the larger local community will insist, at long last, they be held to account.

Perhaps some of you know our next door neighbor Kathleen Taylor- The Lotus Collection, one of the best resources for period textiles in our experience. In a larger discussion I had with Kathleen on a matter not germane to this blog, she had indicated that she and I were perhaps too fussy, and that our attempts to micromanage others found to be tiresome and that our own good selves were tired, too. ‘Fussy’ and ‘micromanage’ are universally agreed to be pejorative terms, and behaviors best, for all our sakes to be avoided, yes?

In a word, ‘no.’ The fact of the matter is, in the world of antiques and the fine and decorative arts generally, that we are fussy translates into exquisite attention to detail about the material we sell. Certainly in Kathleen’s case, the fabrics she offers are of the finest quality, all of them in stunning condition. Does this just happen? Of course not. As well as selecting the finest quality fabrics, Kathleen meticulously supervises their cleaning and restoration, making certain that, either as cushions, wall hanging, or furniture covering, her fabrics, as well as beautiful, are fully serviceable. Given how minutely wrought is, for example, an 18th century Spitalfields silk, this is unbelievably taxing work, and requires the ultimate in micromanagment to accomplish.

And, of course, that is why our customers trade with us, whether it is for fabrics, English antiques, or artwork, it is this attention to detail that might otherwise be characterized as fussiness that keeps us in business.

At long last, the notion of green has entered into the forefront of everyone’s consciousness. My own first Earth Day experience was in 1970- it seems like yesterday- wherein a group of us, all in high school, collected roadside trash along a stretch of state highway in Fresno County. I felt good about this, as one did about so many things at age 15, but a seasoned eco-warrior of 17 reminded all of us that we needed to look at the trash we collected for recycling- that it took energy and pollutants to accomplish not just its manufacture but also its reuse. The better objective for all of us was to be Spartan in our habits and avoid consumption of anything that stimulated a persistent use of resources- or, worse, might sooner rather than later through wear or obsolescence end up in a landfill.

What brings all this to mind is reading, for about the hundredth time this week, yet another interview with someone in the design trade discussing how committed they are to green design, when, in fact, they offer up to clients what amounts to little more than inexpensive kack. The prime prerequisite for any of this material is the claim it is composed of elements derived from renewable resources. What astonishes me is how something that is of indifferent quality- in both manufacturing and aesthetics- can be considered green when it will require replacement in only a few years time.  My temptation in the last phrase was to write ‘in a few months time’, and, actually, that’s a better assessment, given how information technology has increased the speed, and consequent obsolescence, of trends in all manner of design. All the more reason, then, if one is truly committed to the environment, to acquire furniture pieces of heirloom quality, those antique pieces that are established, and have been for centuries, in the aesthetic canon and avoid those whose near term legacy will be garage sale detritus, whose destiny, sooner rather than later will be to grace the local recycling station.