The Internet

Always a little slow on the uptake, it is then not surprising that I continue to be surprised by the amount of sales activity we enjoy the result of our website. With the establishment and the proliferation of online sales platforms, it had originally seemed to me that these were designed for the sale of shall we say cheap and cheerful items of limited antiquity. Consequently, it appeared that successes were achieved mostly with that darling of contemporary design, mid-century modern furniture, and items of no great age that would be produced in multiples. With the dealers with whom we have a good relationship (read ‘those who will actually tell the truth’) it is the general consensus that, while an occasional better sale might be achieved utilizing a sales platform, it is mostly for the sale of what we refer to as price point merchandise.

With a consistent lukewarm response from peers, we’ve relied on our own website and seen, for a few years, roughly the same result- the occasional spot sale, usually for not very much money. What we have seen ongoing, though, is the phenomenon of any actual darkening of the gallery door preceded by a browse on our website. This, coupled with follow-on sales through our website related to an initial gallery visit has made our website a useful tool. While the virtual hasn’t replaced the actual, our website has, in the ten years we’ve maintained it, consistently been an excellent adjunct to our bricks and mortar.

That is, until recently. Markedly over the course of the last year, we are achieving a significant and growing proportion of our sales from website activity unaccompanied by an in-store visit. We always assume that the buyer of traditional material will continue to utilize a traditional method of making a purchase, with four if not five of the senses- not all of them internet accessible- informing the punter’s decision to buy.

In all this, I am reminded of a phenomenon of the ‘60’s, with the American public, largely unused to wine, suddenly exposed to it in greater volume. While it was assumed that the glass of tawny port consumed at Christmas had irrevocably shaped the American palate, sage oenophiles knew that consumers would over time achieve a comfortability with more sophisticated wines. The fortunes of the wine industry in California have certainly borne this out. Similarly, it seems that the internet has exposed so many prospective buyers to art and antiques that, over time, the purchase of items of increasingly better quality using the same method with which their exposure is ineluctably linked appears now to be a natural adjunct.

Though we had assumed that the nature of our internet sales would inevitably be dry and arid, as opposed to the intimate conviviality of our face to face client relationships, we’ve found that the internet is anymore the growing entre to interaction that is just as rewarding as before. Moreover, whatever it is that disposes a client to establish a relationship with a particular dealer seems, for Chappell & McCullar at any rate, to transcend our galleries, somehow infusing our website and those who browse it. I am possibly penning this blog entry too late, as we’ve renewed our lease and we’ll be ‘actual’ for a few more years yet. I suppose I might have got better terms from our landlord had this blog entry appeared a few weeks ago. Still and all, we cannot deny that in the fullness of time the virtual may make the actual gallery if not obsolete then the adjunct that the internet was formerly- even in what we have always steadfastly maintained is the highest of high touch businesses.

Remembering Albert Hadley

Albert HadleyThe design world is certainly diminished with the loss of Albert Hadley last week. In the manner of things, this begs my own reminiscence.

We met Mr. Hadley in his own Nashville in January, 2003, at the Nashville Antiques and Garden Show he long supported.  Unassuming, he walked into our stand, directly to a particular piece and inquired about it. As is our wont, I tried to show him some other pieces, but his focus was on the one and, finding out what he needed to, he left. It was not until sometime later that one of the ladies organizing the show told us that it was Mr. Hadley.

A short time later, Mr. Hadley purchased the piece and, when he was in San Francisco a few months later, visited our gallery. Again, he went to a particular piece, asked specifics, but did not browse. As it happened, this piece was purchased, too. While my venal soul always is disappointed when I’m not able to cross sell a purchaser, it was not until some time later it dawned on me that Mr. Hadley had an efficient, focused way of working that, while modestly frustrating to me, doubtless endeared him to his clients.

Interestingly, although his body of work had a modern edge to it somewhat distinct from that of his long time business partner Sister Parrish, the material acquired from us was rather traditional in appearance. Sadly, we were never able to see either piece placed in situ. I would safely imagine, though, that their ultimate use was in the manner of all other pieces acquired by Mr. Hadley, to achieve a lasting resonance that spoke not only to him, but loudly to his clients. Certainly this was a successful approach, as Mr. Hadley’s client base only swelled over the years. Presumably the focused, professional method we experienced in our limited dealings with him was also manifest in his dealings with clients, most of whom used him again and again.

As my readers have surmised, the enduring memory that I have of Mr. Hadley was of his professionalism. I imagine all who dealt with him- clients, suppliers, and colleagues would agree. He was direct, decisive, and, implicitly efficient. Whether these qualities were inborn or acquired, they were nevertheless pervasive and influential. Witness those designers we’ve dealt with who were protégés of Mr. Hadley: all have been virtually identical to their mentor in their manner of doing business. With luck, then, those of us in the trade, while missing the man, will appreciate Mr. Hadley’s legacy for many years to come.

Site of meaning

For nearly a month, the art world’s been abuzz with word of the purchase by the Qatari royal family of one of the five renditions of Cezanne’s Card Players for what is reported to be in excess of $250 million. This at least doubles the known record price for the purchase of a work of art. Reportedly the painting will be displayed in a public collection being developed by the Qatar Museums Authority. Although acquired by private treaty, it is rumoured that Christies had a hand in facilitating the purchase. Not surprising this, as the Qatari royal family has a strange and mystical relationship with the auction house: the executive director of the Qatar Museums Authority is former Christies chair Edward Dolman.

Although pundits have all described the work as iconic, citing the illustrated presence of any one of Cezanne’s Card Players in virtually every art history survey text, the fact of its inclusion either avoids or at best abbreviates any consideration of why it might be. It’s been a few years, but my own experience in a foundation course in art history began with an examination of the function the discipline serves, specifically to determine how an artwork came to be created, and why it looks the way it does. Within the context of material culture, art historians, using a variety of methodologies, attempt to achieve when considering a work of art a site of meaning. That Cezanne created five similar depictions of peasants playing cards in  Aix-en-Provence would seem a prima facie argument for some considerable degree of significance, but anything associated with an art historical consideration of the work will now forever be occluded by the fact of its acquisition for a record setting amount of cash.

The fact of this is neither unique nor surprising. One wonders, for instance, the expense involved in the transportation by the Romans of huge Egyptian obelisks for display. Cultural swag, of course, in the same way that national art galleries to this very day serve less to showcase native born talent than to display the masterworks produced in distant and disparate- and declining- cultures. The work of Cezanne now on view in Qatar is no less unusual than Cleopatra’s Needle on the Thames Embankment in London. As many times as I’ve passed Cleopatra’s Needle on my way to Somerset House and the Courtauld Institute- itself an enormous repository of foreign art- I’ve never thought of the obelisk as anything other than an expression of 19th century British political, and concomitantly cultural, hegemony. As much as I enjoy visiting the National Gallery in Washington, I’m never there without knowledge that the leading lights responsible for its creation in the early years of the last century did so because they thought that it was something that was an appropriate accoutrement for the world power the United States had become.

Certainly, with its huge oil reserves Qatar’s rapid acquisition of the trappings of western culture is done because it can. Does its acquisition also portend a culture on the decline? Arguable, I suppose. For the immediate future, it seems a shame, though, that in the case of The Card Players, site of meaning  will certainly be bound up with $5/gallon gasoline.

Connoisseurship

On Monday, transiting through the fabled Silicon Valley just to the south, a young man passed us on the motorway in a new silver Porsche. One of my occasional Gestalt moments caused me to say to Keith ‘That’s what the tech types spend their money on.’ Not the deepest of insights, granted, but it’s nonetheless true, and not just for youthful tech millionaires. For anyone who’s out of school and begins to earn big money, the first purchases are expensive cars and expensive homes. That’s what we did, moderated, fortunately, by a little bit of background in collecting that eventually yielded the reasonable degree of connoisseurship that allowed us ultimately to enter the art and antiques trade.

That we had something of a leg up, with exposure in our early lives to art, antiques, and the world of collecting, we nevertheless were decades into our adult lives before the penny really dropped, and we stopped as merely acquisitors and moved toward discernment, a movement, I must say, that continues to this very day and will stretch, I hope, inexorably to the future.

The point of all this is, collecting and connoisseurship, while it can be achieved and fostered, the disposition for it must be arrived at on one’s own, at one’s own pace. The young collector who arrives at our doorstep or who we meet at a fair, by the very fact of his arrival implies he’s predisposed to collect. And, inevitably, the expensive car and expansive home have already been acquired. More often than not, the home with its interior frequently the expression of an interior designer, the young proto-collector finds vapid and seeks, ultimately, to build his own connoisseurship as a comfortable expression of something ineffable that resides within himself. That, of course, is what all of us do. Yes, the ultimate vision is within, but the ability to achieve that inner vision is helped, certainly in my case, by surrounding myself with beautiful objects with which I feel an almost ethereal connection.

All this I say to remind and abstract myself and our business from the focus on youth culture and the sad, pervasive, albeit specious, notion that period material might not be finding favor with the young and wealthy. Fortunately, we found early on as we began to integrate into our inventory 20th century pieces, it was the self same collectors who purchased our period material that were buying those darlings of contemporary design, mid century modern furniture. Moreover, we’ve found that, in our years in business, the age demographic amongst our buyer/collectors has stayed constant. It is not growing younger, but neither is it aging.

I suppose what I mean by this is, the so-called youth market in the art and antiques trade, is our equivalent of the mythical El Dorado. It exists, of course, but not in any way that can be quantified or captured. Marketing has changed, though, with the internet functioning as the virtual fair or gallery, and this, sadly, gives erroneous credence to the notion that it is the young that are out there buying. Bear this in mind, though- my 79 year old mother shops on the internet, and I’d venture to say she’s hardly exceptional.

In the trade, our primary job is to maintain our own connoisseurship and if reinvention is necessary, it should be to the extent that we make ourselves technologically accessible and responsive, and be gracious and welcoming when the younger collector seeks to engage us in developing their connoisseurship.

Louella and Hedda

We received this morning what could only be described as a jeremiad, penned by a well-known designer, a gentleman who has been a friend to us over the years, complaining in vigorous terms about his poor treatment by some people who, though a degree or two distant from the design community, nevertheless exercise what is perceived to be an inordinate degree of oftentimes baleful influence.

You’ll notice how carefully I’m couching all this, as we’ve no enmity toward either camp, but the fact of this fracas points to something that we see more and more in the closely allied art, antiques and design trades. Specifically, that things are in such a state of flux that within the world of fairs, galleries, show houses- all the things that in former times worked well to promote everything in the fine and decorative arts- we’ve all consequently become so defensive about maintaining and puffing our portion of inexorably shrinking turf that we’re unwilling to take anything on the chin anymore. In this regard, I am reminded of my own concern, expressed to one of my neighbors on Jackson Square, about the closing of a well-established gallery. My rather narrow-minded neighbor disputed this, and thought it a good thing, as, in his opinion, loosing one gallery meant more business for those of us who remained. Well, of course not- we all of us depend on each other for support. None of us does exactly the same thing- each designer has their own look, each writer has their own style, each art and antiques gallery has its own collecting aesthetic, and each finds consonance with its own likeminded cadre. A gallery closing on the street does not mean that, even in the short term, those of us who remain will see a bump up in sales. What it does mean is that what was once a venue becomes less of one, with a consequent decline in foot fall.

Though trying to avoid this spate of bitchy cynicism, it all does seem to be exacerbated by an inordinate number of people who, because the numbers of colleagues decline, are thrust forward within all the trades to positions of prominence, somehow managing to survive where others have not. The result of merit? Well, arguably, but I think it’s oftentimes more like Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. The feuding Hollywood gossip columnists were reduced to one, Hopper, who as the younger of the two, would expect to physically survive her rival. It is said that Hopper always promised to prevail because she would, in Hedda’s own words, ‘Outlast the old bag.’ The upshot was, though, that Hopper survived in print only, dying some six years before Parsons, by which time Hopper herself became a journalistic anachronism.

I don’t suppose anyone in the larger design and antiques world really wants to achieve such a pyrrhic victory, so it behooves anyone who presently holds a position of influence to do some introspection to determine how their position was achieved. Times being the way they are, thankfulness and humility should be concomitant with survival. Moreover, it should always go without saying that a position of leadership, regardless of how it was gained, betokens a tremendous degree of responsibility for promoting the trade, much easier accomplished, wouldn’t we all agree?, through collegial promotion, rather than wiping out seeming competitors or those of differing points of view.