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A surprising element of our business is the level of intimacy established with clients, resulting, as a consequence, in the requirement, albeit a greatly pleasurable one, of making house calls. Another fact of our business is how far afield our clients can be and, consequently, we have the opportunity to travel for no reason other than that clients wish to show us how they’ve deployed the pieces they’ve purchased from us, and seek our advice on future collecting objectives.

For the last week or so, the upshot of all this was an extended visit to Washington, DC. Discretion, of course, prevents me from discussing clients in specific, but the auxiliary facets of our business- meals out, gallery and historic site visits, were pleasant in the extreme, and a brief mention of some of these might be of interest to my loyal cadre of blogophiles.

Coincident with the soft-shell crab season, we were fortunate enough to enjoy each of us a fantastic meal of two each, pan fried, atop a bed of succotash at DC Coast. I often forget, coming from San Francisco, the bastion of nouvelle cuisine, that when one travels, one can experience what we term ‘big food’. Suffice to say, the meal was ample, with the freshness of the crab indicating that the poor creatures were doubtless alive not very long before they gave up the ghost to provide Keith and me sustenance. The succotash, so called, was a bed of sweet corn and peas very lightly sautéed in butter- seems simple enough, but it was exquisitely done, and the perfect vector for the pair of soft-shells.

One other feature- the bar. Rarely do we have anything other than our whiskey related standbys to precede a meal, but the bar at DC Coast really surprised us. The Manhattans that are our favorite tipple included, in addition to rye and a whisper of vermouths, bitters that absolutely made the drink. Angostura is perfectly fine and typically what we use at home, but the house made bitters, with, amongst other things, a bit more cinnamon than nutmeg and mace, made for a wonderful difference. Frankly, if I couldn’t have a meal at DC Coast, we’d go back just for a Manhattan at the bar.

DC Coast, 1401 K Street, NW, near Franklin Park.

A bit bleary eyed, arising at 2:30 to watch the royal wedding. Very quickly, let me just say that, to my mind, the wedding itself wasn’t particularly noteworthy, but the coverage of it was. Technology may have its detractors, but watching it all on my flatscreen TV, with the detail so crisp that one could count the paving tiles in the Cosmati mosaic of the chancel- or more distractingly the wild hairs in the eyebrows of the Archbishop of Canterbury- made this, for me, a wedding to remember. I happened to watch it uninterrupted on NBC’s ‘Today’, and the producers had a brain wave in adding former BBC commentator Martin Bashir to the panel. It was Bashir’s ‘there were three of us in this marriage’ interview with Princess Diana that was, for all intents and purposes, the end of the line for Charles and Diana. I don’t recall that Bashir had anything particularly noteworthy to say about the proceedings this morning, but his very presence gave weight and legitimacy to whatever anyone else on the panel had to say.

With all that, and looking beyond the interesting headgear of some of the ladies present, that the wedding was not particularly noteworthy is probably a good thing. I have to say, considering being constantly in the spotlight and despite the, shall we say, complicated domestic arrangements of his parents and the early death of his mother, Prince William seems a remarkably uncomplicated young man. And a young man who seems keenly aware of his role and responsibility. The 20^th century hasn’t been easy for monarchs, with modernity at cross purposes with kings, leaving them these days rather thin on the ground.

The House of Windsor endures, though, as they’ve maintained just the right balance of regality and democracy, distance and personality, to keep them popular with their subjects. Something that Martin Bashir did say this morning, a recent poll indicated that 89% of the British public are, if not ardent royalists, then at least strongly supportive of the monarchy. For all the pomp and splendour, the royal family is not particularly costly, with the per person tariff to keep the family going running to only about £1 annually for each person in the UK. By the way, this is another Bashir statistic.

Yesterday on NPR, a British commentator mentioned how the royal wedding would be watched by so many people the result of our fascination with reality TV, with in her words, the royal wedding representing the ‘acme’ of the genre. I don’t think so, and not just because I find most reality TV shows, to put not to fine a point on it, repellant. The royal wedding, indeed the royal family, are popular because a fair bit of what they do conserves tradition- note that I said conserve, not preserve. Consequently, enough of what they are and what they do has a contemporary resonance. More important, though, is their service to tradition that forms a common touchstone, a reminder that what is arguably the best in all of us has been formed gradually and when and if modern life seems confusing, a remembrance of tradition allows us to regain our bearings.

So there it is, for me, and I suspect for most of us who got up at 2 this morning, a unique blend of the best of today, with the best of the past.

Twice in as many days, we’ve had browsers in our galleries who, before even requesting specifics about the pieces for which they’d evinced interest, inquired about a discount. Frankly, when this sort of thing happens, and mercifully it happens now with ever less frequency, I know that a sale is definitely not in the offing. There was a time that outlets for designer type inputs- furniture, fabrics, plumbing fixtures- almost invariably offered some kind of discount, that basically functioned to provide a margin between a wholesale and a retail price. That said, I never felt our galleries functioned as a warehouse distribution center, so the notion of a wholesale discount always perplexed me. Lately, though, times being the way they are even wholesale merchants are happy to sell retail.

But this isn’t just a sign of hard, albeit ameliorating, times. The internet, and the ease with which a virtual shop can serve the needs of customers, makes shopping so simple that, where formerly designers and others shopped for their clients, now their clients shop for themselves. Additionally, in the art and antiques world, the proliferation of online databases makes it imperative that any retail gallery be price competitive. To mark something up in price, just to mark it down in order to provide a discount, will now result in a lost sale. Before my better collector clients reprove me for implying that price is what sells the better quality material, I have to say that not all our sales are to my loyal cadre of collectors. We do have the frequent one-off sale, and that buyer is invariably price sensitive. And before my loyal clients become too high breasted, I will remind them that they are, too. Bottom line- whatever you have, no matter how rare or fine the quality, it better be priced to sell.

Mind you, when we do have pricing discussions with clients, when the discount becomes the primary focus, Keith McCullar and I move toward, shall we say, palaver truncation. When the client, though, discusses with some degree of familiarity prices of similar pieces sold over the course of the last several years, that is a horse of a different, and very pleasing, color. This signifies that we have a knowledgeable collector who, along with price, will happily discuss the relative merits of pieces recently sold compared to a piece under consideration. For that buyer we have oodles of time. Note I said ‘buyer’, because that is what the astute collector is very likely to become.

National publications can be a bit more pointed than a poor dealer trying to earn his daily crust. As a follow-on from my last two blog entries describing the strange and mystical relationship between Chinese buyers and the major auction houses, herewith an article in this week’s Newsweek:

“Chinese bidders are offering record sums at international auctions–but sellers complain that getting payment is an imperial pain.”

Click to read the entire article

Just recently, more than any other topic, buyers and browsers in our galleries have wanted to chat about the now legendary sale of the Qianlong reticulated vase that set the world record price for a Chinese work of art. Though far eastern material is not our primary stock in trade, we do a fair old business in it, and, more than anything, with the numbers of dealers internationally becoming rather thinner on the ground with each passing day, we necessarily find ourselves the recipients of waves of information, some of it occasionally accurate.

What we had heard rumoured, but now confirmed, is that the still unnamed buyer for the vase has not, five months on from the sale, actually paid for the piece. The auction house reputedly is confident payment will be forthcoming in the fullness of time, and that, in the course of business, five months is not an unreasonable length of time for settlement. Presumably they must have not only a different class of trading partners than we do, but also a different banking relationship. Moreover, the occasional auction purchases that we make, if not settled within a (very limited) window, will immediately bring on some rather strident dunning notices from the salesroom.

The flip side of this is, auction houses, even in the best of times have a fair cadre of erstwhile buyers who renege on purchases. The why of this is not surprising, given the frequent incidence of so-called auction fever, where the novice and not so novice buyers get carried away in a pitch of bidding, only to find that, after the hammer has fallen to them, they’ve spent more than they can afford, or, on leaving the salesroom, are stricken with buyer’s remorse, and decide, once the invoice arrives, to DK.

Specific to the famed vase, however, I’ve heard an interesting notion explaining the non, or at least yet to materialize, payment. That is, with a Chinese art market still on the rise, it could be the erstwhile buyer is speculating on a rise in price over and above what he paid in November. Could be that the auction house is functioning, albeit reluctantly, as a clearing house, with settlement to come when the piece is ultimately resold. Let’s watch and see, shall we?