A recurrent conversational theme amongst the cognoscenti- by which I mean myself and my handful of loyal readers- is the displacement of traditional trade venues. While it is often argued that, for period materials, a lot of what’s gone on has to do with changing tastes, with a younger buying public more in tune with 20th and 21st century material, a private discussion with anyone who deals in what might ostensibly seem the mode of the present day would yield the same degree of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
And that degree of angst seems fairly well spread across the land, even up to and including that bastion of nouveau billionaires, the San Francisco bay area. We were surprised to find this past Friday that the local branch of an international auction house with whom we trade from time to time had shed a goodly number of senior staff, with the possibility floated it might close down that location entirely. While it had been reported in the fine art press this time last year it was considered as an acquisition by a saleroom partly owned by the Chinese government, nothing came of it.
While the purchasing opportunities for fine art and antiques have changed, they haven’t precisely shrunk overall. Although the retail venues like Bond Street, Madison Avenue, and even San Francisco’s own Jackson Square are shadows of their former selves, auction houses and online sales platforms, to say nothing of the websites of traditional dealers, provide a spoiled for choice opportunity for all and sundry. And these alternate venues, clearly, are struggling themselves. And the why of this?
What hasn’t occurred is any concomitant expansion of the money that’s available to make purchases from whomever. Nothing has changed the simple fact that all buyers have a budget, by which I mean disposable monthly income, and that budget is finite. Our trade colleagues abroad are forever enquiring of our sales activity amongst the tech billionaires in the greater bay area, presuming that these folks have money to spend, and that as it is quickly and newly come upon will spend it profligately. Oh, that they would. The monthly budget limitation, in my experience, applies to all buyers of any stripe, established or, shall we say, parvenu. People spend what they happen to have on hand, and I have never, ever seen or heard of any punter encashing an investment to buy any piece of fine or decorative art. One irony, though, is the investment in and the floating of the plethora of on-line sales platforms. With so many about, they do, like locusts, come and they go, but for the interim, the cost to develop and launch functions to siphon off a fair bit of cash from investors that might arguably otherwise go to purchase worthwhile items from the established trade.
Further, our competition for the monthly supply of the ready consists not just of erstwhile investment, or even of items of collector quality crowding in, but such like as Porsches and Maseratis. In this circumstance, we may level the playing field, or tip it in our favor, when we can figure out how to move a pair of Linnell salon chairs down the road with the buyer seated in them, and the price tag prominently displayed. A ridiculous notion, of course, but the alternative seems to be to wait until we experience a wave of connoisseurship. Until that time, the winnowing out amongst members of the trade that was this last week given evidence in the local saleroom will continue apace.