What’s the old saw, something about life’s uncertainly compelling one to eat dessert. I suppose that explains why it is that I am beginning this squib in conclusive fashion- I eagerly anticipate the 2014 outing of Masterpiece. This, of course, with the more than positive signs for positive movement in the trade enhanced by the 2013 fair just concluded.

The fact is, this year’s fair made a singular effort to emphasize a more traditional focus- on art and antiques. That seems an obvious move, but it marks a significant shift away from its original raison d’être, as a luxury goods fair, offering wine futures and new cars in the 7 figure price range in an attempt to broaden the base, and numbers of, grandee attendees. Bravo for their bravery in trying this format, and kudos for, shall we say, returning to the roots of a world class art and antiques fair. And bravery, too, for ‘traditional’ seems in this age where even the word ‘yesterday’ has a pejorative connotation. While a number of dealers over the last few years voted with their feet- dealer turnover has been significant- I suspect that there may be a volte-face amongst the trade, with this year’s increased attendance, and significant sales of collector material of the highest quality, and much of it period material, auguring very well both for the fair and its success, and the boost it’s given the accredited trade.

We’ve lost a good friend, one of our best and oldest, with the death a few weeks ago of Joe Nye.

Keith and I first met Joe in Los Angeles, in the first hour of the first night of the first Los Angeles Antiques Show we ever participated in. He liked our material and he liked us, and this, through Joe’s good offices, led to a client purchase that was, up to that time, the largest sale we’d ever enjoyed. It also set a benchmark for our relationship not just with interior designers, but with clients generally. Joe, for the tenure of our relationship, did what he said he was going to do when he said he was going to do it.

I suppose that’s what I really want to say in this brief squib- that Joe was always a gentleman and a man of his word. His talent preceded him, but didn’t dominate the person he was. We saw each other regularly over the years, personally as well as professionally, and we were complimented by the fact that Joe purchased a number of things from us for his own collection. But the personal was ever present, with innumerable calls and visits from Joe, apropos of nothing, and I can’t think of any meals out with anyone we ever enjoyed more.

Joe struggled with some personal demons that threatened to get the better of him, but through all that, Joe was always Joe, and always a joy to be around. Keith and I will miss him for the rest of our lives. A memorial service for Joe is planned for later this month in Los Angeles.

Of the things in my life that has given me lasting pride and pleasure, nothing can compare with my 33 year relationship with Keith McCullar. As we’ve quietly got on with our lives, we’ve reluctantly borne the brunt of the discriminatory treatment all gay men endure, including that heretofore sanctioned by the federal government. It makes me sick to hear those who bleat about the sanctity of ‘traditional’ marriage, a mindset, it appears, framed by having watched ‘Father of the Bride’- the 1950 version, with Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett and a radiantly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor. What all of this ignores, of course, is the fact that institutional marriage in the United States is not much more than 200 years old, and has much, much more to do with preserving property rights than it does anything to do with a supposed adherence to some scriptural precept. With all that, we needn’t go down the road of biblical literalism on any subject, as those who make strenuous arguments citing chapter and verse can only do so whilst ignoring some of the other Levitican admonitions and truly horrific proscriptions also contained therein.

After word came down yesterday, both Keith and I received a number of phone calls from friends asking what it was we planned to do. The fact is, anything we can do to ameliorate the financial hardship wrought by the discriminatory treatment we’ve experienced during the tenure of our relationship we will do as soon as the courts allow. We’ve been fortunate, the two of us, both with backgrounds in finance to have the knowledge and experience to so order our financial as well as our personal lives- for instance funding life insurances to pay estate taxes on jointly acquired property that in marriage would be within a spousal exemption and always maintaining an up-to-date durable power of attorney for healthcare- mindful, though, these and many other maneuverings cost us lots of time and money.

But that’s been the easy part. The harder portion has been the sense of being looked at down the nose by the larger world we inhabit, including one’s own family, and being relegated to the role of the favorite uncle- or more likely, the rich uncle, that takes everyone out to dinner and pays the bill- he has more money, you see, because he has no children to support, and anyway, his questionable moral status obliges him to pay, and pay again and again, in some sort of vague expiation. And Keith? Well, of course, his status is never really defined, though he’s been a constant fixture for decades. It’s interesting- we attended a family wedding not so long ago, and Keith astutely observed that the new ‘traditional’ marital partner would, after a 30 minute ceremony, be immediately embraced within the bosom of the family, where he, after 3 decades, was still only just tolerated. It might be no surprise, then, that neither of our families said anything to us about the Supreme Court decisions yesterday.

Because we’ve been able to get along with our lives, and overall life has been good to us- a wonderful quality of life, and spared the horrors of HIV that decimated our circle of friends- we’ve not become radicalized. Perhaps we should have done, but for the moment, the prospect of being less victimized is emotionally nearly euphoric. I hope, though, with sanctions lifting and huge queues forming outside registry offices, will come an eventual understanding that, like everyone else, we’re trying to get on in life with a partner we love.

With a good friend of ours on his way to London and staying at Duke’s, I’m put in mind of Spencer House only a stone’s throw away. Herewith a reprise of my blog entry about Spencer House.

Amidst the buzz about the Althorp clear-out, it might possibly be that the focus is on the celebrity of the Spencer family. A pity, as the notoriety about the family and its possessions occludes the splendor of Spencer House, which survives in its now thankfully restored glory.

Its Green Park façade survives in its originality, designed in the 1750’s by John Vardy in the Palladian manner. Interesting, though, to see the crossed palm fronds in the pediment, placed beneath and thereby giving rather unusual emphasis to the ocular window.

With the demolition of so many aristocratic London great houses in the 1920’s, Spencer House is a rare survival. Nevertheless, for most of the 20th century, it was put to hard use, for over thirty years as offices for The Economist, complete with suspended acoustical ceilings in the interior and other institutional detritus. Its restoration began with the acquisition of the property in 1985 by a consortium headed by Lord Rothschild. Astonishingly, significant portions of the interior remained virtually intact. Although in the interior realization Vardy was early on replaced by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart, Vardy’s Palm Room wildly celebrates the aforementioned motif used, albeit with considerable restraint, in the façade.

With the rooms of state all aesthetically fairly exuberant, it might be difficult to discern the segue from the rococo of Vardy to the archeologically accurate neoclassicism of Stuart. Placed directly over the Palm Room, Stuart’s neoclassicism finds expression in the Painted Room. With its complement of damask and gilt, it is some distance removed from the restraint one might expect if one were to gauge from the illustrations in Stuart’s 1762 Antiquities of Athens.

While it is the various works of Vardy and Stuart at Spencer House that are especially acclaimed, the contribution of interior designer David Mlinaric in providing guidance for the restoration of the rooms of state and the successful integration of the lesser rooms to make the entire interior a contiguous whole that arguably constitutes a feat almost as notable as that of those 18th century worthies. Although Mlinaric’s design firm carries on, M. Mlinaric is largely retired, but his years of activity contributed a wonderful legacy in a number of historic interiors. Indeed, Lord Rothschild used Mlinaric in another project to great effect, the design of the rooms in the Bachelor’s Wing at Waddesdon Manor, a Rothschild house in Buckinghamshire.

Was a time when, with the vicissitudes of traveling, it was more remunerative for the merchant to bring goods to the consumer than it was to wait for the consumer to bring himself to the merchant. The Yankee peddler, of course, is the classic example of the intrepid merchant whose stock in trade consisted of the necessities, and not a few luxuries, that the erstwhile buyer located far out in the sticks would see in rare visits to town, often only annually, coinciding with the post harvest marketing of crops or livestock.

Perhaps my few readers have noticed that times have changed. Travel is no longer a hazardous affair undertaken only as a necessity, although my latest transcontinental plane trip did make me ask myself if the trip were really necessary. That aside, the dearth of door to door sales- does anyone remember the ubiquitous Fuller Brush man?- should indicate that the nature of retail has changed. The rapid evolution has seen the high street retailer now replaced by the shopping mall, which itself is quickly fading into obsolescence with the proliferation of online purchases at the ethereal  ‘virtual’ storefront.

Still and all, some retail trading venues continue to, if not flourish, then at least exist in a specialized niche that would be hard to imagine disappearing from the landscape. In this respect, I think of the well-established art market cities of Paris, London and New York. The famous salesrooms and the finest dealers all inhabit these cities, and any expansion to other regional centers in Europe, Asia, or North America is now something of the past, the occasional ad hoc sale and exceptional fair not withstanding. The why of this isn’t tough to figure out- the buyer pool for what it is that is purchased at the rarefied heights is extremely limited, and it is easier to capture a larger part of that pool if items are offered within an established venue.

It is, then, a surprise to find that the world’s premier art and antiques fair is seriously considering an expansion to China, ostensibly to capture, on their own home turf, what is perceived to be a burgeoning pool of collectors. The why of all this mystifies me as, with sales over the last several years since China has become a real player in the art market, the Chinese themselves have had no difficulty in finding their way to the established centers- and beyond. Moreover, while the Chinese have purchased art and antiques of other national schools, their overwhelming preference has been to repatriate their own treasures. One wonders, then, with the fair’s reputation predicated on the offering of a panoply of fine material from around the world, how broadly successful a new world class fair could be.

It comes as a further surprise that one of the prime movers in the effort to launch a fair in China is one of the major salesrooms, who doubtless will have an overarching selling presence at the fair. While length of purse might make the salesroom of value in assisting to market the fair, the not so hidden message, it seems, would be to perpetrate the notion, a specious one I’ll admit, that one might browse the stock of the established dealer and pick his brains, but then make the ultimate purchase from the ‘wholesale’ salesroom. The fair dealers would at best serve as a decorative backdrop to support the larger marketing agenda of the salesroom, in a relationship as synchronic as that enjoyed between the invading army and the maidens of the besieged town.

Perhaps the experience this week of a consortium of English salesrooms whose vaunted premier sale in China left ¾ of the offered lots unsold, and patronized by a paltry number of prospective buyers, will send a message to show organizers and prospective dealers that the Chinese market is already adequately served, and an in-country presence will not automatically result in a sales Golconda.