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We’ll admit, Chatsworth and Spencer House may be more vaunted- what you’d expect with several centuries’ head start. But you will certainly find some exquisite pieces at Chappell & McCullar, from history’s best makers- William Kent, Pierre Langlois, Gillows of Lancaster, François Hervé. In a word, extraordinary. Please find a selection of wonderful pieces, all currently in our San Francisco gallery.

Don’t forget to browse our website, www.chappellmccullar.com, where you will find a large selection of our other extraordinary pieces.

Of course, we welcome your inquiries, and delight in your purchases!

With warmest wishes,

Michael James Chappell & Keith D. McCullar

Presumably there must have been some ducal dust on the ‘attic’ items from Chatsworth, certainly on those bits and pieces salvaged from Devonshire House, demolished nearly 90 years ago and gathering, well, you know. With the sale now history and with a sale total of nearly £6,500,000, it will be interesting to see what further spruce up Chatsworth might experience.

Also of interest will be the unfolding deployment of items purchased at the sale. The trade was in evidence, but in the information age, nothing is secret, so it will be a particular feat to see how a dealer could make a purchase as prominent as at the Chatsworth sale, mark it up and then offer it for sale. There was a time when country house sales were six in a weekend and goods were cheap, a dealer could buy an extraordinary item or ten, salt them away for as long as a decade, and then bring them out, fresh, as it were, to the market. No one in the trade, I’m afraid, has that long a purse any longer, and items are almost invariably offered as soon as they are shop ready. That said, the Chatsworth sale commanded extraordinary prices and one can only conclude much of it was driven by retail punters, making if not a once in a lifetime, then a once in a decade purchase.

This week’s ‘attic’ sale at Chatsworth naturally enough puts me in mind of the phenomenon of the country house sale. I’ve been lucky enough to attend some fascinating sales over the last 15 years or so, and it might be as much for the opportunity to look within some extraordinary houses as to have the chance to acquire the contents. Prominent among these are Hackwood Park, with its exterior designed by John Vardy and its interior replete with surviving Vardy designed furniture, Adam designed Dumfries House, with its welter of Chippendale furniture, hardly moved since it was installed in the 1750’s, and Easton Neston, the seat of the Lords Hesketh, one of the most exquisite of all late baroque houses.

Dumfries, of course, was one of the most famous sales that never happened, with the Prince of Wales swooping in at the last moment to save both the house and its contents for the nation.  Given my vocation, one might ask what treasures we were able to acquire from any of the other house sales. The short answer is, not a stick. The why of this isn’t too hard to divine, either, as the notion of buying something exquisite from a country house always brings out all of the county set, all with the same objective. Consequently, whatever sells, sells well. Interestingly, the Hackwood Park sale in 1998 was right in the midst of a raging bull market- and, pardon the cliché, at the height of the dot.com boom- and attracted London city types hell bent on making a purchase. Well, that doesn’t include me, who has to make acquisitions at a price that allows me to sell at sufficient profit to allow the occasional purchase of groceries.

It was at the Hackwood sale I first noticed, with the bursting of the dot.com bubble, how much of the material purchased that came back on the market, selling at prices significantly below those achieved for the same items at the original auction. Presumably some of the dot.com/City types needed to buy groceries, too. As much as anything, this kind of phenomenon should serve to demonstrate that the more prominent and inviting the sale, the greater the buying frenzy, and consequently, the less likely one is to acquire something at a fair, much less a bargain, price. That is probably understated- for anything of any quality, the buyer will doubtless pay through the nose.

The forthcoming Chatsworth ‘attic’ sale brings front and centre the work done by François Hervé. One of a legion of émigré craftsman working in London, surprisingly little is known about Hervé, all the more surprising given his illustrious clientele. Besides the fifth Duke of Devonshire on commissions for both Devonshire House and the surviving Chatsworth, Hervé is known to have worked for the Spencer family at Althorp, and for the Prince of Wales at Carlton House, under the aegis of the prince’s favored architect, Henry Holland.

With all that, our own knowledge of Hervé remains sufficiently limited such that our gallery tags show only ‘flourished 1781-1796’ reflecting the dates of his known commissions. Considerable linkages exist between these, as well, both familial and political. The wife of the fifth Duke of Devonshire was the famed Georgiana, the sister of Earl Spencer of Althorp. And, both families shared with the Prince of Wales an affiliation with the reform minded Whig party. Interesting to speculate on what Herve’s pattern of patronage might mean, and if his work- some much of it in gilt in a clearly recognizable French style- might betoken a political and social liberalism on the part of his clients. Or, more probably, was a fashion statement shared by select members of the quality.

Hardly just a wide spot in the road, Fresno, my hometown, is the centre of a metropolitan area containing nearly one million well differentiated souls, but now finding common cause in umbrage. The why of this? Meg Whitman’s characterization of Fresno as ‘awful’. So she is quoted, further comparing Fresno to Detroit, the poster child for urban blight.

As I have been asked this question countless times, let me say, yes, Fresno is still hot in the summer, and yes, Fresno can be damp and foggy in winter. But Fresno, my own family’s home for nearly 150 years remains beautifully sited amidst vineyards and orchards, with the Sierra Nevada range as a backdrop. The setting is remarkable and although the weather can be oppressive, for most of the year, it is enjoyable. Sadly, though, despite over a half century of effort to stem the tide, much of Fresno’s downtown and older residential and commercial areas seem victims of what I would term slash and burn development, with the newer areas at ever increasing remove always, however briefly, the most desirable.

Well, some say so, anyway. Fresno’s downtown, though no longer the city’s retail heart, nevertheless retains a welter of substantial and architecturally significant buildings from early last century, testimony to Fresno’s agricultural hegemony. The city’s first suburban commercial development, the Tower District, so named for the Tower Theatre, an art moderne marvel that survives from the 1930’s, is itself a beautiful, albeit under appreciated, cluster of mid-century architecture.  Our own home in the Fig Garden neighborhood, a leafy enclave in the middle of town, was a joy, designed by Academy Award winning set designer Hilyard Brown.

My Fresno encomium and yet my gallery sited in San Francisco may beg some question, but, frankly, despite years there, we have found that Fresnans who would never consider trading with us locally gleefully seek us out in San Francisco. The ‘if it comes from somewhere else it has to be better’ phenomenon, while not unique to Fresno, exists there in spades. I suppose decades of jokes about Fresno on the Tonight Show have done their damage, with Fresnans consequently not having a very good conceit of their community. Or its appearance, at any rate.

Now Meg has caught them out. Sad, because Fresno remains in most ways a delightful place full of good things, including good people, fewer of whom, I’d venture, will now be supporters of Meg Whitman.