We all want to say goodbye and good riddance to 2008, but, then, for ages now, standard western iconography has depicted the year exiting as an infirm old man and the incoming new as a baby fresh with buoyant expectancy. As I think about it, one of the most tragic of all New Year’s parties was one we attended where the host, a man of a certain age, annually made a point of coming out at midnight dressed as the New Year’s baby. I had never seen either a diaper, or liver spots, that large. Horrible…

With all that, I also think about the trepidation, as a child, with which I faced the future. No optimism there- mostly fear that I would be unable to cope with things which, to my mind, I was ill prepared to face. New coursework in school, for instance, and what seemed like impossible social situations. The wonders of childhood? Malarkey.

My preference is the rationality of my own adulthood, which I think started about six months ago or so, because my own effort is to achieve calm perspective. Consequently, I am a bit more dispassionate in my own assessment of 2008. Not really a very deep insight, but, frankly, despite the economic vicissitudes of the year, we are still here and still in business. We have been lucky to make a few good sales and, possibly, contributed a bit of good management to our daily affairs. Mind you, we are thankful for the successes we enjoyed during the year and we will not, as my mother would put it, break our arms patting our own selves on the back.
But, in contrast with the trepidation I felt as a child when facing the future, I am now always optimistic about the year upcoming. In our industry, design projects either commence or those in hiatus resume in mid January, and the better antiques fairs begin by the end of the month. These are, of course, measures that are specific to our business, and pardon me that they are also a bit on the venal side. But, then, we are in business to make money, and our positive frame of mind is always helped along when we are making sales. My partner Keith McCullar, who my gentle readers may recall is the fellow in our organization who holds the keys to our checkbook, nearly locks up when the bank balance declines, as it always does this month, so his mood improves markedly in January.  Since the gentleman who dressed as the New Year’s baby is consigned to our former friendships, nothing then stands to get in the way of a positive start to 2009. It is only a few hours away, and we can all hold out until then.

The inevitable is now the actual- Christie’s has announced retrenchment in its sales activities, with staff and departmental reductions in its South Kensington salesrooms. Ostensibly a sign of the times, Christie’s South Ken had expanded its sales, if not its actual physical plant, in order to become a retail player in the antiques and decorative arts market. Christie’s website, redesigned a little less than a year ago, is, as well, retail oriented, in the manner of eBay- designed to track lots with an eye to eventual purchase. Between ourselves, the site has become a bear to use- slow to load and cumbersome to navigate. With all that, Christie’s had an eye toward the occasional retail buyer, offering auctions even on a Sunday for the ease of younger buyers.

It is difficult to tell how successful Christie’s has actually been, in that, with the global economic slowdown, their business overall has slowed. That both Christie’s and Sotheby’s have had significant cash drains the result of very high end guaranteed lots that did not perform to estimate is well known, but the lower end of their business has some very high direct selling costs, too, witness the production of frequently issued, magazine format catalogs, and doubtless significantly more staff to cover the extended opening hours. Also, I doubt that they formerly, on Saturdays and Sundays, kept all the lights burning. Sotheby’s faced the music nearly two years ago, closing their second tier London sales room at Olympia.

At almost the same time, a couple of the best antiques and art fair promoters have announced the cancellation of some very good fairs, possibly the most prominent being the Asian art fair organized for a number of years at the Park Avenue armory by Brian Haughton. A real loss, as this has been the eastern art equivalent of TEFAF Maastricht. But, 30 dealers- the paltry number committed- does not a show make, certainly in a venue as expensive as one on the Upper East Side. At the end of the day, though, dealers have to know they are going to make money at a fair, and, if the performance of the fair has been less than stellar, it is unlikely, times being the way they are, that a dealer is willing to roll the dice. A very good dealer whose name, since I haven’t asked his permission to use it shall therefore remain anonymous, conjectures that, to have it considered as a good fair, a dealer should sell in the range of 10 times the amount of his stand rental. Assuming the stand rental is in the range of $25,000- well, you can do the math, but the $250,000 goal in better times might be now rather hard to achieve during the run of a 4, 5, or even 6 day show.

From global to specific (Chappell & McCullar specific), the title references what we face during the month that always forces us into a panic. Tax payments, both property and income, holiday entertaining, Christmas gifts, and the usual cost of keeping the place open, very little of which is offset by any significant revenue. Even with our short tenure in business, we should be used to this phenomenon, as it visits us every year. Regardless of the broader market meltdown, our December has been about the same as always- gallery traffic, but no one willing to commit to a purchase. Mind you, we have made some terrific sales to people who stopped in during the holidays to browse, but the sale was always booked in January. With all that, we dutifully mind the shop during the month. As anxious as we are for custom, we do though have to remind ourselves, or at least Keith has to remind me, not to pounce on anyone who happens to darken our threshold. Despite none of our customers that I can think of could be described as timid, they still find it off-putting to be pounced upon.

The fact is, we do all of us run out of money in December, and, while one would assume that somehow we would reserve for this, it is difficult to, certainly for us. You may, my 20 or so devoted readers, feel a bit blah early in the new year, but for us, it is cause for celebration, as design projects resume and what private clients that are in line for bonuses receive at least a portion of them by mid-January, and, praise heaven, some of this money is directed toward purchases from Chappell & McCullar.

Thanksgiving is past and Keith and I had a pleasant enough time at my mother and father’s. No agenda, just cooking and eating. As my father returned thanks, I must say, it struck us deeply that we had all of us plenty to be thankful for.

So the holiday season is well and truly upon us, but, despite a thankful Thanksgiving, I don’t feel particularly convivial- conviviality being a feature, I understand, that is an essential part of the holiday season. The why of this is complicated and has a lot to do with money- my own, of course, about which I am inordinately fond. Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder, and it is the dearth of a bit of the ready every December that makes me more than a bit cranky. This is an expensive month always, with tax payments due, Christmas presents to buy (I wonder if my nephews would be satisfied with an orange apiece? Since they all live in southern California, a lump of coal to keep them warm over Christmas wouldn’t be very useful. Besides, I don’t know of any coal merchants who would sell it by the lump.) Moreover, sales activity in our galleries, if not actually grinding to a halt, slows considerably. Clearly, our clients are faced with some of the same financial vicissitudes as we are- tax payments, Christmas presents, and so forth. Our clients’ perception of their wealth? Let’s not talk about market performance just at the moment and live for at least today in blissful ignorance, shall we? In what might be considered counterintuitive, designer activity slows to a crawl, too. The triple pedestal dining table and long set of chairs to go around it, perfect for holiday entertaining, are not on the shopping list until early in the new year, when design projects resume and clients have deferred year end bonus checks to pay for them.

Although this so far, my twenty or so devoted readers, might sound like the preamble to the holiday schedule of Scrooge, Marley and Company, you do presumably have some understanding why I am less than convivial during this month, and particularly right now, faced as we are with the Jackson Square holiday walk. We have been in business at this location for six years now, and have participated in six holiday walks, and never, and I mean never, has it brought into our galleries anyone other than people looking for hospitality (read ‘free hooch’). It used to astonish me that someone would spend $3.00 on bus fare to come here to drink a $1.50 glass of wine, until I noted how many $1.50 glasses of wine some of these people (‘free-loaders’ is our familiar term) were consuming. As a sidebar, a year or two ago, to add ambience, we actually hired Dickens-attired ladies and gentlemen to stroll the street. What we found, unfortunately, was that these characters must have all taken their cue from London’s Gin Lane, given how drunk most of them were when they got here. The result of all this, the event is now by invitation only- and sans Dickens characters-  which sort of defeats the purpose of a promotional activity meant to bring current and prospective customers into the neighborhood.

Interestingly, a few of the merchants here- actually, only one- has taken profound exception to the consensus decision to limit the numbers of guests for our street event, arguing that times being the way they are, we ought to widen our outreach. This merchant does, as it happens, have the largest mailing list of any of the participating dealers, and also, due to the price of her material, probably has the greatest opportunity to make a few sales on the night. That being said, she most probably has a point, in macroeconomic terms, in that a recession feeds upon itself. Slow sales results in a lack of business promotion, which brings a contraction of sales activity, which further reduces business promotion, which perpetuates and exacerbates slow sales. That convoluted sentence may sound nearly Jamesian, but it is meant to communicate how a slow economy moves in a downward spiral that would be helped by positively promoting Jackson Square.

So, you will find Keith and me greeting all our guests, whether our invitees or those who trade with other dealers. If our smiles seem a little forced, bear in mind that we are participating in this street event not primarily for Chappell & McCullar but for the greater good. Who knows? We might even become convivial and have more to be thankful for this holiday season than just a good turkey dinner with the home folks.

Poor auction performance in all categories from contemporary to period, art and antiques dealers shutting down right and left, and those few surviving dealers that can still afford to do shows, finding their show participation more of an exercise in giving their stock in trade a weekend outing- rather than finding their gear a good, permanent home.

Of course, some of the blame for this must rest with the money that isn’t there anymore that a year ago might have been spent on art and antiques. As well, those that do still have change to jingle in their pockets are psychologically precluded from spending it on much of anything, apparently. So much of our business, and everyone else’s, is dependent on perception of wealth. The very rich tend to read the newspapers, watch television, and browse the internet and they, too, see reports on ‘toxic assets’ (I would like to shoot the pundit who first coined that moronic phrase), and, as a consequence, no matter how much of the ready they may have, no matter how strongly their own portfolio has fared, their perception is that they are not as wealthy as they might formerly have been. The final consequence is that money is kept in the bank, rather than in the circulation that would result in the purchase of a painting- or a new car, a dishwasher, or an electric can opener for that matter.

With all that, in spite of what Eli Broad said about Sotheby’s recent contemporary auctions as a ‘half-price sale’, the same cannot be said about Georgian antiques. If there are any significant auction bargains in period furniture, I haven’t seen them. Ordinary furniture, perhaps, but why- ever- buy ordinary? This brings me, finally, to what I want to say about the notion of market meltdown, at least in the art and antiques market. What constitutes meltdown, anyway? Over the course of the last two years, the market for contemporary art, for instance, has skyrocketed. Fad or fashion? Or, manipulated? For contemporary material that has not established itself in the art historical canon, investment in contemporary art has to be at best something of a crap shoot. Who can say how well this material will weather changes in taste? One presumes, then, that the price escalation so much of this material has experienced in the last couple of years has had at least something to do with its promotion by tastemakers, and those who sought to be. The salesrooms, with the huge guarantees they offered consignors, sought to be, if not taste, then market makers. At the end of the day, though, someone must buy the material and, regardless of general economic conditions, everything has an upper price limit. Let’s plan to revisit Basquiat, Bacon, and Hirst material in ten years time, shall we?, and we’ll see if some of the hot names might not have become the 21st century equivalent of that most popular of late 19th century artists, Luke Fildes. ‘Luke who?’ you ask. My point exactly.

To be fair, canonical material has struggled, too. Witness the sale at Christie’s of the remaining stock of venerable dealers in 18th century antiques Hotspur and Jeremy. Against a low estimate of £4 million, the sale achieved only £3.6 million, and most of that to private buyers. The Antiques Trade Gazette was spot on when it noted that the trade shied away from the material because it was too expensive- not more money than anyone could spend, but just flatly more than the material was worth. The private buyer, who makes the occasional purchase, might be willing to overpay, but the trade buyer can’t and expect to stay in business. And, well, Hotspur and Jeremy overpaid for quite a bit of this material, and, clearly, they haven’t been able to stay in business. Most of what was at Christie’s was acquired by these dealers in the last couple of years, and was sold at the recent sale for less than the price formerly paid. One can only imagine what these dealer’s retail prices must have been. The upper price limit had been reached, but, unfortunately for Hotspur and Jeremy, they had themselves established that upper price limit a couple of year’s ago in the Christie’s and Sotheby’s salesrooms.