Cher’s Malibu House

The catalog arrived yesterday from Sotheby’s for the sale of the contents of Cher’s Malibu house. The sale will be at the most fitting venue one can imagine for the event- the Beverly Hilton. I’ve always felt more than a slight affinity with Cher, and not because she is an iconic figure for gay men. No, it is because we are both of us from Fresno, and while both of us got away from that benighted community, our paths diverged. 

The furnishings Cher is selling are all, according to the catalog, inspired by Augustus Pugin, certainly the early 19th century’s most influential designer in the Gothic mode. Cher’s furnishings run heavily toward stained oak, with a lot of pointed arches, crockets, and finials. By sheer weight of number, in fact a few of the pieces are pretty good. Thank goodness, though, Pugin is long dead and now presumably has attained the wisdom of the ages and not therefore turning over in his grave. If he were alive, Pugin’s always fragile mental state would be put under considerable strain had he seen the use that Cher’s designer had put a Gothic idiom to, and citing Pugin as the inspiration. Sadly, in putting acquisition ahead of connoisseurship, Cher has missed out on a real opportunity to embrace at least partly what Pugin stood for.

Pugin, as well as an inspired designer, was amazingly adept at putting his designs within an intellectual framework, and it is this that led to the design and decoration of what was arguably his best work- the Houses of Parliament. In his embracing of the Gothic, he sought to put in material form what he considered to be appropriate both aesthetically, intellectually, and morally. He felt that both architecture and decoration should be edifying and uplifting not only for those who frequently dwelt there, but also for the occasional visitor. In fact, Pugin began the train of thought that carried through John Ruskin and William Morris, preaching the moral superiority of the Gothic. In simple terms, the Gothic, expressed prominently in medieval great churches, were created by those who gloried in their workmanship, and it was this glory that resulted in such a tremendous efflorescence of decoration. As well, it was inherently vernacular, as the craftsmen had very little idea about the architecture of classical times, so couldn’t have been influenced by it. So, really, the Gothic is very much popular architecture, a style of the people, and not institutional in the way that classical architecture can be. And it was institutionalism, both in government and in big business, that had a profound dehumanizing effect on the population. The Gothic, then, was a humane form of decoration that functioned to foster and encourage individual creativity and accomplishment.

Well, this doesn’t quite match the mindset expressed in Cher’s house- an overblown vaguely middle Italian villa filled with overstated, over large dark oak furniture. Any humane social content in a manner consistent with Pugin? Not that I can see. Good luck to Cher, though- she decorates and sells houses often, and that is always a boon to the antiques trade.

 

Welcome to Michael’s antiques blog

Welcome to our antiques blog, providing a bit of insight into the world of the antiques trade, with a focus on English antiques. The primary blogger will be Michael Chappell, with frequent contributions from Keith McCullar and our colleagues in London, Paris, and New York. As some of you know, we spend a lot of our time sourcing art work of all types for clients, so the occasional bits of interesting behind the scenes news about the art world will be an occasional feature of the blog.

George III mahogany chest of drawers with secretaire drawer and original rococco gilt brass handlesWhat really caught my eye this week was the sale at auction in England of a mid Georgian lowboy, cataloged as late 19th century, but determined, and certainly confirmed by the fury of the bidding, to be mid 18th century. It sold for GBP18,000 plus auction premium, to an unnamed dealer in the English countryside. With its generous use of fine mahogany timbers, outline, and original handles in raffle leaf motif, it immediately reminded us of the secretaire chest we have, attributed to William Vile. This sort of auction price for a piece of unattributed brown furniture sort of flies in the face of what has become the received wisdom that no one wants this kind of thing. Don’t you believe it! Quality is always quality in English antiques- attributed or not. That the English antiques trade, and the American trade, has had some pretty tough sledding over the last few years has rather occluded the fact that prices continue to escalate. For our clients who only buy occasionally, this always comes as something of a shock. But at the same time, we as dealers have to be mindful that, as with the William Vile piece we have in inventory, when it is sold, we will have a devil of a time finding something of comparable quality to replace it.