Judging with their feet

If you are interested in the business of the trade in art and antiques, Skate’s Market Research is nearly as handy as the pocket on a shirt. Although they do compile the statistics associated with blockbuster auction and private sales, they also provide stats on things less sexy but more germane to the everyday decisions a dealer must make, including whether or not to participate in art and antiques fairs.

With the bricks and mortar venues around the world in their death throes, the pop up venues that art and antiques fairs provide function as what would seem a logical, relatively low cost opportunity to get one’s gear in front of the buying public. With the show organizer and frequently a worthy benefit charity performing the ostensible heavy lifting of promoting the venue and purchasing opportunity, the dealer then only, it would seem, has to show up and sell to the raft of people massed at the front door waiting to make a longed for purchase.

What’s not apparent is the dealer’s cost associated with the fair. The rental of the booth, decorating the booth, lighting, electrical outlets, phone outlets, and many times, assessments for advertising in the show catalog and promoting the fair through local and national media. Oh, yes- and the cost of transport. For us, the least expensive transport bill is $15,000. On the whole, the least expensive fair we participate in costs us, before we sell anything, $52,000.

I suppose if one were guaranteed sales into the six or seven figures, the significant investment for what often functions as a pop up store that exists for no longer than a long weekend might seem paltry. But the fact is, fair attendance and at-show purchases have been on the wane. And this is where Skate’s becomes an invaluable tool- they report fair performance with a degree of accuracy that is, shall we say, somewhat illusory when one questions fair promoters. Mind you, fair promoters, whether those who operate for profit or those who are an arm of a not for profit worthy cause, seek to put the best face on their face to induce art and antiques dealers to participate. One would suppose with the numbers of dealers becoming thinner and thinner on the ground, the word about the relative performance of a fair would quickly make its way around. Our experience, though, is that dealers most generally have attended the same school of obfuscation as most fair promoters.  With this in mind, what we do, long after the fact, is assess the number of individual dealers returning to the same fair and assume that, if they are returning, it must constitute a successful venue. We track this over years and have determined some surprising facts. One of the more vaunted fairs that promotes itself as a major international venue has had a dealer turnover of nearly 130% in the last four years. Clearly, the dealers are judging the success of this fair with their feet.

Keith and I are just returned from a fair we felt might be a fit for us, but expensive so wanted to check it out thoroughly before we even put numbers together precedent to giving it serious consideration. Frankly, one could as they say have shot a cannon through the venue on the Saturday afternoon we visited. Skate’s recent report on the success of this fair, and ‘success’ is the word used by the fair organizer, indicated that attendance was in the mid five figures. However, divisible by the number of dealers exhibiting, the per booth attendance was in the- wait for it- low three figures.  We determined, based on our lowest estimated cost to participate, this resulted in a cost of $300 for each visitor to our booth. That is on a par with handing out a couple of bottles of Dom Perignon to each gallery visitor just for darkening our door. For those of you with a profound thirst, please don’t get the idea we are planning on doing either the fair or offering free champers any time soon.

Provenance

A letter floated in to the galleries the other day from another dealer, who by way of representing the quality of her inventory, cited its ‘provenance’. Within the context of the letter, it appeared that she didn’t really understand the meaning of the word. But then it occurred to me that this term, so often used in the trade, and on ‘Antiques Roadshow’, is probably not completely understood. Perhaps, then, a brief discussion and the implications when applied to a piece of furniture might be of some use to all ten of my readers.

As a working definition, ‘provenance’ simply means who owned the piece before. Clearly, with a number of pieces in our inventory as much as 300 years old, everything has been owned by very many people before, but we don’t often cite provenance. Mostly, the prior ownership is either unknown or insufficiently significant to be worth noting. When provenance is cited, it is for several different reasons. Firstly, provenance when it can assist in attributing the piece to a known workshop. In the 18th century heyday of stately homebuilding in England, Thomas Chippendale, Mayhew and Ince, Thomas Cobb, William Vile, and a number of prominent craftsmen completed vast suites of movables to furnish these massive new piles. Chances are, if the piece has remained in the home and with the family for whom it was originally commissioned, the original invoice, prepared and issued by Chippendale or the like, survives. With English furniture in particular, rarely labelled or marked by its maker, provenance often plays a critial role in attribution.

More recent provenance, absent knowing its original owner, might not be helpful in attribution, but can argue for the quality of the piece. For instance, a mid 18th century serving table in our inventory was part of a collection assembled in the early part of the 20th century by the furniture historian R.W.Symonds, one of the leading intellectual lights in the English furniture field. We always include this when citing the piece’s provenance. Although of a Chippendale design in the Chinese taste, it is unlikely that Symonds chose this piece for that reason. Rather, it is more likely that the selection was based on timber quality and color, and the fact that the blind fret carving to the legs and the frieze is original. Since very many pieces of this basic design were ‘enhanced’ by recarving in the Chippendale revival period of the late 19th century, original carving was, and still is, an extremely desirable feature.

Finally, provenance can sometimes be a value-added feature on its own, regardless of the quality of the piece, if the prior owner was or is a person of particular celebrity. Immediately I think of the collection of the late Bill Blass, auctioned off at Sotheby’s a few years ago. Some of the Regency furniture was of excellent quality, some was not, but everything sold for a lot of money. Interestingly, although very much a factor in the trade in America in the early part of the last century, aristocratic provenance seems lately to be more of a selling feature in Europe. Although nearly all European countries are long since republics, presumably buyers there still encounter enough aristos wandering around that it makes the notion of aristocratic provenance more meaningful.

Remembering Jack R. Chappell

It’s been a couple of weeks, and the figurative stirring up of the dust has settled back to sort of what it was before, so now is an appropriate time to briefly reflect on the life and death of my father, Jack Chappell. An accomplished man who did well in his sphere, he was well liked, and well regarded, which to my mind is not quite the same thing. In any event, at his memorial service, he pulled a very full church.

An educator, a farmer, and a sportsman, he pursued these endeavors with an equal passion that, when these interests competed as they did from time to time, overset him. As he was perforce the overarching presence and personality in our household, the rest of the family was as a consequence oftentimes overwhelmed, as well. Quick to anger, but just as quick to forget, life at home was never ever dull.

Dad had a great love of the outdoors, and particularly our section of the Sierra Nevada, with resultant annual late summer trips through the high country on horseback where we’d not see another soul for weeks at a time. Though at the time I would rather have been visiting the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, now I realize this was an experience that cannot today be repeated, and am grateful for it.

A strong personality, with a son of strong personality, we frequently did not get along. With all that, we were as much alike as we were different, which was something my father understood without actually saying so, and as a consequence, kept his distance when he sensed that our personalities would collide. He loved family life, but hated discord, where for me, discord always seemed an inevitable part of life, and while not to be courted, need not be feared, either.

However, for the two of us, there were no go areas that functioned as not quite barriers, but hurdles. As Dad became very ill very quickly, overcoming these was much on my mind. But as I broached a couple of things that were heretofore verboten, my father was yet resistant and then it occurred to me- he was facing the prospect of eternity, and was very busy making up his own soul. What I sought to accomplish was the smallest of small potatoes in the cosmic scheme of things- and was mightily dwarfed by what my father faced. So the time was, as all wise people counsel, to let it go.

My father died on March 19, and while he’s left a void in my life, that void constitutes the largest element of my own grief. What both of us shared was a spirituality, albeit manifested differently in both of us, but I am nevertheless confident that he is now possessed of the wisdom of the ages, and that some of that wisdom he is yet able to communicate to me with some benefit. What for both of us were hurdles I considered were specific to our relationship I now know are part of life’s vicissitudes. While I don’t have the understanding of these that my father has achieved in his passing, I am optimistic that I will in the fullness of time, and realize that this is a gift my father has given me.

Crap that competes

With the trade in art and antiques in a state of shall we say flux, my readers have doubtless discerned my frequent and so far not completely successful grappling with the why of this. The major salesrooms have had problems with revenue growth and profitability, with the most graphic result of this the head rolling at the highest levels in both major houses. The retail trade in art and antiques has seen some of its major players sink below the waves over the course of the last decade, and traditional venues have shrunk to sizes now minuscule, if they continue to exist at all.

Some have said that much of this has been the result of changing tastes, pointing out that so-called ’traditional’ material is less desirable than mid 20th century or contemporary. For those who think there may be something to this, I point out that the numbers of those dealers whose speciality runs to the more recent are themselves rather thin on the ground. In fact, I read just yesterday of one of the most prominent of their number ‘rationalizing’ their stock in trade through the sale of much of it at auction. Hmmm….

Amidst all of this, I see the growth and expansion of a number (by which I mean ‘plethora’) of companies whose sole focus is the sale of vintage and lower priced new and used items on the internet. Aided by sites like Pinterest and any number of TV shows on cable, that ordinary people can be their own designer and do it on the cheap has captured the greater public imagination- and significantly undercut the market for good and fine quality art and antiques.

Hugely testimonial to this phenomenon is the IPO last week of Etsy, which is now, according to Skate’s Art Market Research, the company with the largest market capitalization in the decorative arts industry. Do they offer what I sell? No. However, they do offer the thrill of online shopping. What we’ve found, whatever stripe of buyer, they all have a budget- not just for the purchase of a particular item, but overall. If it is $5,000, that can be spent on one item, or an aggregate of 5 or 10 items, but once spent, the budget is exhausted. Consequently, my prospective purchasers, if they’ve spent their money on Etsy, will always have less to spend with me, or any other member of the accredited trade. So, while not a direct competitor, the finite buyer budget now, for good or for ill, now has many more opportunities to dissipate itself.

Of course, so much of what’s purchased constitutes garage sale items of the (probably not so distant) future, but so what? In the short term, and for the foreseeable future it still functions, even obliquely as competition.

Sotheby’s ‘middle market’

The Antiques Trade Gazette is reporting that Sotheby’s plans to expand to include the so-called middle market in an effort to repair its wobbly income statement. For those of you who don’t know, within our ambit, the middle market would be antiques and artwork with a value of about $5,000 to about $50,000. Or, put another way, the typical stock in trade of most members of the accredited trade in art and antiques. Sotheby’s has for many years eschewed smaller consignments, preferring to focus on individual items or collections with potential hammer prices in the 6 to 7 to 8 figures.

And how does one suppose Sotheby’s will fare in this endeavor? I can respond with a degree of pith unusual for my loquacious self- they will fail. The fact of the matter is, the retail trade in art and antiques is successful in a way that Sotheby’s can never be. At my level, our business is a relationship one of the highest level of high touch. The stock that we offer does not precisely fly out the front door these days, and in fact never has. Our business is mostly driven by collectors, and those collectors, while they may only purchase one item at a time, very rarely only purchase one item in total. The stock that we have in inventory is selected by my own good self, and, using these general criteria, must form a confluence of quality, rarity, and condition. Oh, yes, and price. Price does sell, but quality, of course, sells first. We never ever have items just for their commercial appeal. But the composition and appearance of our stock- that’s just a part of the story.

Surprising to both Keith McCullar and me when we started this business was the level of intimacy established between ourselves and our clients. The initial entrée may be our stock, and for those of you who are amongst the cognoscenti, each successful dealer has for want of a better term a ‘look’. And it is not the same look dealer to dealer. Subtle, in some cases, but as distinctive for those who know as the aromatic difference between rosemary and lavender. And then it is trading with Keith and me. I don’t think anyone would ever describe us as exactly companionable, but we always try to be fair and straightforward and patient.

In condensed terms, what we establish with our clients is an intimate connection where the relationship then begins to inform us, as well. We acquire stock, within our established criteria, where we have one or more clients in mind. Of course we have spot sales, typically on one of the sales platforms we subscribe to, but for those who trade with us regularly, we are always the go to guys when our client cadre wants something specific.

Sotheby’s is now and will remain, the vicissitudes of their financial performance allowing, an auction house. They sell what someone else is willing to consign, to anyone willing to buy it, with no identifiable ‘look’ beyond the very, very general. Moreover, while we are so specific about the condition of what we sell that we maintain our own restoration shop, a purchase from Sotheby’s is made as is, where is. Hardly high touch and always caveat emptor. If memory serves, the auction house has tried all this before barely 10 years ago with their so called arcade sales in New York, and their Olympia sales in London. As the inherent features of the saleroom remain unchanged, hard to imagine that they can achieve any success this time. At the risk of sounding redundant and immodest, the inherent relationship driven features of our own modest business remain unchanged, as well.