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.

In my former career in the banking business, ‘disintermediation’ was the term we used to describe the dwindling of the cash the bank held on deposit for customers, flowing as it would from time to time from bank directed investments- usually money market accounts- toward customer-directed investments. Hardly exclusive to banking, in simple terms the phenomenon would accurately be described as cutting out the middleman, and in these days of internet trading, disintermediation is an occurrence every retail merchant must be able to cope with.

I suppose the most immediate effect has been the shrinking bricks and mortar environment, with those merchants who represent a variety of product lines finding that their stores are used largely for display, with the shopper making the eventual purchase online and frequently directly from the manufacturer. For the rest of us, particularly in the art and antiques world, where our stock in trade is not just distinctive but in most cases unique, one would presume this wouldn’t happen. However, as a friend and colleague whose speciality is decorative boxes pointed out, his competition for sales can come from bizarre places, Target being one of them. Although we wish it were otherwise, not all of our prospective customers are of shall we say a connoisseurial bent. Say for instance one sought a Regency period decorative box to use to discreetly store the TV remote- this is a common contemporary use!- highly likely one will come up with something in period style and, viewed on the screen- or more frequently these days the iphone- the style example for $26 will look just the ticket, and the $2,600 period example, albeit fairly priced for what it is, will be given the go by. But more than that, when searching online, the browser will be met with a panoply of different items, far removed from what might have been the focus of their search, and like as not their ultimate purchase itself equally as removed as the apple is from the orange.

That’s a lot of the problem the trade faces, with internet shopping largely determined by the key words merchants include to describe their products. Nothing governs this, and the result is a fragmentation of the customer’s online search, carrying them very far afield from what it is that they originally had in mind when the search was contemplated. But even when the search remains relatively focused- using the Regency box example- price shopping becomes the order of the day, and the independent merchant in the antiques trade finds himself competing head to head with mass market merchandisers. And the result? The better capitalized merchant will survive, and the independent merchant will go the way of the buggy whip.

With the struggle the trade continues to undergo despite the improving worldwide economy, the general presumption- or at least the opinion we’ve heard most often- is that tastes have changed, and there’s less of a passion for period material. We tend to discount this, as our buyer demographic has remained basically constant since we established our retail gallery nearly 12 years ago- the buyers are basically the same age, in the same lines of work, and in the same geographic areas. What has changed is the increase we’ve experienced in the online, price driven ‘spot’ buyer of less expensive material- people who are unlikely to ever darken our gallery threshold.
What all this leads me to believe is that the online sales phenomenon that is quickly displacing bricks and mortar, is also fragmenting the dollars normally spent on antiques. The disintermediation that is an inherent feature of online purchases also exposes the buyer to a dizzying panoply of items to purchase. What might be assumed to be, with an improved economy, more money to spend on antiques, is, to the detriment of the antiques trade, hugely fragmented by a disproportionately larger number of items to spend that money on.

We’re just back from participating in the 61st annual Theta Charity Antiques Show in Houston- the nation’s longest running fine art and antiques fair, and, for us, one of the best to participate in. Let me say at the outset that a very large part of this is due to the kindness and professionalism of the Theta ladies who, year in and year out, work to make this a stellar event. Behind the scenes, participating dealers are never so well fed and watered as they are by the Theta ladies. And to the wider world, no other fair is as widely promoted. We saw no fewer than 20 TV ads for the show, and countless print and billboard ads. The preview party is an event of the first order, and for this year, not another soul could have been accommodated, it was that full.

For those venal few amongst my handful of readers, you may ask about the proof of the pudding. So, if you must know, we brought home substantially less gear than we took.
But as happy as we are with the spot sales at the show, Houston has become for us nearly like home, given the numbers of collector relationships we’ve been fortunate to establish. Keith and I arrived several days in advance of the show and tarried for two days after its conclusion to meet with clients. High touch, and we like it that way. Collectors ourselves, we happily engage with those who wish to engage with us.

And I suppose, to reflect on the show itself, that’s what’s crucial to remember- engagement. A number of our clients visited the show several times during its run, attending one or more of the lectures from an impressive roster of speakers, and also taking the time to really look at the material that the dealers had on show. Mind you, we did see a fair old number of interior designers- including show speaker and New York based super designer Elissa Cullman  but what we’ve really begun to notice are the increasing numbers of collectors making at-show purchases. This is a happy throwback to an earlier time, with the collecting public establishing, as they did in the old days, relationships with their favorite dealers. We’re happy for the spot sales and the designer driven sales, but it is the relationships that pay the bills year in and year out.

An engaged crowd of attendees may not necessarily make a show successful for dealers in the short term, but I’d venture to say it will in the long term, which is, I hope, how dealers involved with the show would gauge success, and gauge thereby their interest in returning the following year. And so, too, the Theta ladies. Engagement, within the context of certainly the Theta fair involves the dealer and both domestic partners whenever a significant purchase decision is in the offing. When we have both wife and husband in our stand, I know we will have a much, much greater opportunity to sell than if we have either just the wife or just the husband. While the Theta preview is certainly a couples function, we didn’t see husbands in great numbers until the Sunday, the last day of the show. Perhaps next year, the Theta ladies might want to add to their playbook further functions to consistently bring in both sexes during the entire run of the show.

The Theta Charity Antiques Show, held annually at Houston’s George R Brown Convention Center

http://thetacharityantiquesshow.com

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.