Always a confluence of items, my last blog engendered a fair old amount of response, and it also coincided with an invitation to the launch of a website devoted to the sale of vintage material. Interestingly, the young lady that invited me had the title of ‘curator’. Hmm…what, I wonder, does that entail? Particularly curious, now that I had a look at her website. Perhaps she’s able to suss out the nature of the stains on the ‘vintage’ upholstery, or determine what sort of household pet it was that made the bite marks on the chair legs. Of note, their featured consignor is a local fellow who proudly offers his wares as worthy of the Paris flea market. He’s bragging about this?

Sadly for those of us who are offering period material, there has been a proliferation of sites devoted to the sale of vintage items that I have seen frequently characterized not as used furniture, but as- wait for it- ‘pre-loved’. But now currently ‘post- rubbish’ or ‘pre-dumpster.’

As my devoted blogophiles will recall from my last entry, I remain surprised that a lot of design has so far plumbed the depths that vintage material constitutes a laudable addition to an interior scheme. Mind you, I’m not talking about fine quality 20th century design, but pieces that are looks-like but isn’t kitsch, and pet-stained soft furnishings. I guess if you miss your first college apartment that badly, this is the look for you. Ugh!

What remains a sad fact, though, is that so many people just don’t know. The notion of what period material means for a dealer or a knowledgeable collector is lost on nearly everyone else. We posted a nice Sheraton period card table online as a featured item the other day, and I immediately received a comment from a poor benighted soul about the problems he had restoring his Sheraton period card table- the one his parents purchased from Baker Furniture in the 1950’s. We were not, as they say, on the same page.

Nor are most people. That sounds snotty, but it is a value neutral fact and something that dealers, collectors, and designers need to increasingly get used to. If one does a key word search for ‘Sheraton card table’, I’d venture to say that, amongst a few good period examples, there will be lots and lots and lots of old-ish vintage pieces. And with the plethora of sales sites that offer mostly vintage material, those period pieces will be in the distinct minority. Given that not everyone is a seasoned collector, this vast array can’t help but confuse, and what choice? By default, the buyer uses the only tool within their ken, and that is- shop by price. Using this single measure, will the buyer get value for money? Probably not, but if the effort is to recreate an upscale version of a college apartment, it might be a step up from what they’re used to.

What we used to term jargon is now ‘(pick your industry)- speak’, and while ‘jargon’ had the connotation of something that was, within its context, esoteric and recondite, certainly in the antiques, art and design trades, most of the short hand terms are used to give something cachet. Watching the Antiques Roadshow, the proper name ‘Chippendale’ is widely applied to virtually any furniture piece in even the vaguest of mid 18th century English or English colonial style and of such degrees of quality, usually bad, that it is surprising that we haven’t heard that the master’s mortal remains have spun to the surface of the ground above his final resting place.

A trade-speak term that has sadly found currency is the term ‘vintage’. As near as I can understand it, ‘vintage’ is anything in the decorative arts that has some age but is not nearly an antique. Terms change, but something that is now vintage is what I would have termed for most of my life ‘used furniture’, or if speaking amongst my franker colleagues, ‘firewood’. As my few loyal blogophiles will know from reading one of my recent entries, very many new furniture mass market retailers are producing pieces of vaguely period design, and whose faux distress both in show frame, upholstery, and underframe, while meant to betoken age actually functions to mask inherently poor quality. It is therefore comical to see in the work of many designers an admixture of so-called vintage pieces that by their inclusion seek to give some sort of sophistication and depth of feeling to newly made crap. Just one man’s view, of course, but any contemporary use of a 50’s Heywood Wakefield coffee table is always going to put me in mind of Eve Arden and ‘Our Miss Brooks’.

I’ve seen this bizarre mix of the pseudo period and the vintage lots of times recently, and in a couple of settings here locally- early 20th century houses of neoclassical design- the juxtaposition was truly horrific. The newly bleached parquetry and painted over/painted out plaster grotesqueries and arabesques did make matters jarringly worse. I do not know why householders do not know that unusual compositions in marred and inappropriate settings do not betoken cleverness. They are what they are- just plain odd. Mind you, I am not stumping for some notion of strict adherence to a design aesthetic that, even in its own time was largely the fancy, albeit a studied one, of the designer. The interiors whether of Robert Adam or Frank Lloyd Wright were rarities in their own day, and seldom survive unaltered. Eclectism is the natural result of spaces lived in and when this happens to good effect, it becomes a happy union of the period and the more contemporary, when and if, of course, exterior and interior architecture provide a congenial matrix. An interior scheme that is botched in conception, disjoined from its surroundings, won’t be helped by the addition of so-called vintage material.

What occludes the fact that Georgians loved their movables to be colorful is that so very little painted furniture survives. What’s often the only thing on offer through most dealers is dour, heavily oxidized- or in antique dealers’ speak ‘beautifully patinated’- mahogany and not to the taste of absolutely everyone. More’s the pity, as the notion that period furniture runs to one class of goods risks turning off a number who might one day become collectors.

I would venture to say that, during the 18th and early 19th centuries, painted furniture significantly outnumbered those pieces of mahogany, probably because painted pieces, made from common and vernacular timbers like deal, beech and oak and then applied with a splash of paint, were much, much cheaper to produce than those made from exotic imported woods. The brightly colored and high style armchairs pictured have frames of beech, seats of cane, and although finely decorated, the labor to perform the task was in the day the least expensive part of the operation. How times have changed. Even a dense wood like oak could be made to look light and sexy with the right sort of coating.

The George II period japanned coffer on stand is composed of thick planks of quartersawn oak that, while in themselves heavy, are fancifully decorated with a  red japanning that contributes a lightness that minimizes what would otherwise be the dark, glowering mass of the coffer.

The other feature of painted furniture, particular for seating, was that it was a cheap and cheerful support for something that was infinitely more expensive- its fabric covering. In this modern age of machine made fabrics, we’ve no notion of how extraordinarily expensive furnishing fabrics were 200 or more years ago.

All hand spun, hand dyed and hand loomed, the intensity of the labor involved to produce fabric made it immeasurably expensive, and the quintessence of luxurious display.  We’ve tried to replicate this sort of pairing on the sofa pictured, covered in an Italian silk lampas of 18th century design.

But what’s overlooked in all this is the simple fact that, though today mahogany can seem hulkingly overpowering, in its own day it was not. Crisply carved with a wash of red pigment to bring out its own ruddy color, mahogany furniture was very, very bright in a way that would seem garish to today’s collector. As well, the carved details were then often gilt heightened as an accent, witness the cabriole legs of this Chippendale armchair in the French taste.  This gilding, not surprising, seldom survives as it would wear away over time, or be stripped off as fashion changed.

The English sea victories over the Dutch who formerly dominated the trade in exotic woods gave England a corner on the mahogany market, which became, after about 1730, the favored exotic timber. Dense and colorful, often with beautiful figure, mahogany also takes wonderfully to carving- so much so that the beauty of the wood itself was often intentionally subordinate to the carving.

The George II gilded console pictured is masterfully carved mahogany- but also covered in a mixture of both oil- and water gilding to contribute tonal differences that heightened the carving’s three dimensional effect. We’ve done a bit of archeology on this piece, and determined that it was always gilded- the supreme luxury of an exotic material, extraordinarily wrought, and then finished with luxurious surface decoration.

Sadly, changing fashions, and ephemeral surface decoration, meant that most painted furniture even of the best quality, when nicked or damaged, was simply thrown away. Furniture made of the more exotic woods survived, partly because, as their surfaces were less prone to damage, they looked a bit better for longer than their painted counterparts, and partly because, higher priced initially, they were regarded as inherently more valuable.

Like millions of others, I was glued to the TV this past Sunday evening, watching the further travails of the extended Crawley family and their retainers, in the redoubtable, albeit sanitized, Highclere Castle, now more familiarly known as ‘Downton Abbey’. I like the performers and their performances, and by and large find the setting and the situations, and their resolutions, believable and consistent with the day and age in which the characters live- sufficiently consistent, that is to say, to garner besides me an audience of historicists, heritage groupies, and those who just want to be entertained. I am a fan of Julian Fellowes who understands life amongst the great and the good better than anyone now writing, and if you want something that is thoroughly entertaining, read his novel Snobs of a few years ago.

No question, the interest in the series is a real phenomenon, and we’ve been asked over and over if its success has lead to a spike in interest in our material. Surprisingly, the answer is no, and the why of it is hard to fathom. Clearly, the interest in ‘Downton…’ is heightened by the accuracy of production detail lavished upon it. One would presume that this would spawn some significant stab made toward life imitating art. If it has, someone would have to point it out to me. We have had locally a British-themed restaurant open, but this has more to do with the local Brit ex-pat whose fortune made in the tech industry funded its development. But purchases of moveables, so far as we can see, in anyone’s effort to recreate their own personal homage to Downton Abbey has yet to take place. If we made a sale to everyone who inquired about a bump, we would indeed realize one, but so far, nothing of the sort.

We were sorry to hear of the death of a good friend and longtime family trading partner whose overarching presence in the raisin industry in my home town of Fresno made him something of a celebrity. I mention this as, in remembering this gentleman, of how often I had wondered why it was that, despite a burgeoning demand for natural and additive free food products, production, prices and demand for the excellent product that sun-dried raisins are has actually declined over the past three decades. As I was discussing this for the umpteenth time this morning on the phone with my father, he opined that it was a lack of consistent promotion within the industry to keep raisins in the mind of the consuming public. Possibly, but it seemed to me that, with raisins a consumable  known since antiquity, demand should proceed apace whatever the promotional efforts, however flawed.

‘Downton Abbey’ and natural sun-dried raisins- highly disparate one would assume. But in my mind, similar in that both have a niche that, while popular within it, should spawn some broader and expanding interest. But neither has done so, and in both cases, the why of it is any body’s guess. Perhaps my small but ever so loyal cadre of readers will have something to say, either about Downton Abbey or natural sun dried raisins. Who knows? That might stimulate a bump or perhaps two that, at least for me, will aid in providing my daily crust.

We were pleased to be joined by a colleague for a smart drink yesterday post 5PM. Keith and I do this from time to time, often enough, one would presume, to identify some favorite watering holes. Unfortunately, those venues we initially identify as appropriate for a hang out designation frequently change staff, and bar menu, so what might otherwise be a comfortable spot becomes, sooner rather than later, unfamiliar, often with its pleasant characteristics shed. That this happens is an odd phenomenon, as I always feel that one’s core business is repeat business, but as with so much these days, the received wisdom is that frequent change is essential. Exactly why that is, I don’t know- we still believe that relationships are a necessary component of any successful business, and would be furious at ourselves if, changing for the sake of change, we ran business off.

As a consequence, we tried out a new spot, the lobby bar of the local branch of a well-known international chain of luxury hotels. We had been in before, not all that long ago, and while the food and service were adequate, albeit changed from our last visit, the décor was not. What had been in the last year a comfortable, cheery environment of overstuffed chairs and banquettes was changed to something that reminded me of the stock in trade of one of the furniture rental stores- angular seating furniture with black painted show frames, angular low tables with stone tops, and while the banquettes were still there, they were, as was all the seat furniture, upholstered in dour tones of black and gray.

Frankly, though, this mimics nearly all the lobby bars of all the local luxury hotels. Scotch that- the local branches of all the luxury hotel chains. Locally owned hostelries are not as abundant in San Francisco as they once were. And therein lies the tale, with chains of hotels going the way of every other mass market retailer of goods and services- every one copies everyone else and with such frequency that no one maintains any particular distinction for very long. We see this everywhere. As it happened, our cocktails out were preceded by a visit to the San Francisco Design Centre where we had remarked about the sameness of so much of the showroom material, any one of which, or all of whom, for that matter, could have supplied furnishings- with no variation in style or palette- to all the hotels. A funny story just occurred to me, about a gentleman in the antiques trade who said that when he looked across his shop he saw shiny surfaces and all of them brown. Mind you, all the same is no more interesting in period material than it is in contemporary, so our longstanding attempt in own gallery is to pleasantly interrupt that sea of brown with some painted finishes, gilding, and distinctive fabrics. However, when we looked across some of the showrooms we visited yesterday, it was not a sea of brown that we were greeted with, but one of a dull gray. Likewise the hotel bar- only relieved, but thank goodness it was, by the warm brown of my neat rye whiskey. Oh, yes- and Keith’s Manhattan.