Author: Michael Chappell

The big news in the trade this morning is the increase Christie’s has posted for buyer’s premium. It always surprises the numbers of people who assume, when the hammer falls in the saleroom, that that is the ultimate price of the item sold. Far from it, with Christie’s now charging the purchaser a minimum of 25% over the hammer price on lots up to £225,000, 20% for up to £3,000,000, and a full one percent increase to 13.5% for anything above £3 million- just for the privilege of doing business with them. Put another way and cribbing figures cited in the relevant article in this morning’s edition of Antiques Trade Gazette, if one were to purchase a painting at Christie’s flagship King Street saleroom, if the hammer fell at £500,000, the invoice presented including the auction premium charged the buyer would now total- wait for it- £611,250. For the higher end lots, the increase is staggering. For a £10,000,000 purchase, expect the invoice to now total £11,560,000. Mind you, that doesn’t include the 17-1/2% Value Added Tax (VAT) charged by Christie’s on the premium portion, or the applicable sales tax on lots sold in the United States. For my local California readers, expect to pay a minimum of yet another 8% if you make a purchase at Christie’s in New York.

Staggering, and bear in mind, what the buyer pays, the consignor of the sold lot pays a nearly equivalent amount in seller’s premium, plus everything from soup to nuts in what the trade refers to as junk fees- the cost of illustrating the lot, cost of extraordinary handling, and the cost of insuring the lot while it is in Christie’s possession.

While Christie’s is the first to announce this increase, Sotheby’s will doubtless shortly follow suit. In fact, based on Sotheby’s financial performance, it is surprising they were not the first to announce. Christie’s as privately owned one must assume that this increase is to shore up its bottom line. Sotheby’s as publicly traded is an open book. Of interest, Sotheby’s closing share price today of $40.50 is 26% lower than it was a year ago, and 35% lower than its 52-week high in June, 2018, of $60.

And both Christie’s and Sotheby’s need the money. As many times as the international press reports an impressive sale, there is some offsetting report of auction house mismanagement or malfeasance. The story just now making the rounds is of the consignment to Christie’s of a painting by Francis Bacon for sale by private treaty, with Christie’s then selling it publicly- and without the consignor’s permission- for many millions of dollars less than they had guaranteed the consignor. As I am writing about increased auction house premiums, it is apropos to remind my gentle readers that a price fixing scandal involving Christie’s and Sotheby’s colluding on the establishment of premiums that put Sotheby’s star auctioneer Dede Brooks and its chairman Alfred Taubman in jail.

But with all that, I have to acknowledge that the auction house business is an expensive one, with a huge expense in personnel, so huge in fact that Christie’s and Sotheby’s regularly winnows out the upper and middle range staff, replacing them with those fresh of face with art history diplomas with the ink still wet. Oh, yes- and that command a much lower salary. And of course, trimming the bottom line is the name of the game, with both Christie’s and Sotheby’s, although they’ve sought to be a retail vendor of fine art and antiques and seek ever yet to be a force online, facing blistering competition that has increased at a nearly exponential rate from innumerable online selling platforms.

While it appears that I am crying crocodile tears about the vicissitudes of Christie’s and Sotheby’s, I will admit that over the years I’ve done business with them, and profitably. By weight of numbers, one will find the occasional bargain- a sleeper, as David Dickinson on BBC’s ‘Bargain Hunt’ would have it. Banking on the rapidity with which items consigned must be cataloged- and the inexperience of those doing the cataloging- there are, not often but occasionally, pieces on offer to be had for not precisely a song, but for a price at which I can add value and then resell at a profit. Bear in mind, the risk for me is that what an item sold for is available online for anyone who cares to to look and see. As recently as a week ago I spoke to a buyer in Canada who questioned me about an item I had purchased at auction in London. I gleefully told him that it was me who spent time to view, assess and bid on the item, it was me who spent time and money making arrangements to ship the item, it was me who spent time and money directing and paying for the restoration to put the item in saleable condition, and it was me who researched, accurately described and photographed the item and presented it, at long last, for sale.

So, with Christie’s and Sotheby’s, while making an auction purchase has always been expensive and risky, expensive has crossed the threshold into prohibitive territory- and is no less risky. Lots of the aphorisms that apply not in a positive way are applicable when dealing with them- phrases like ‘the price is not the cost’, ‘as-is, where-is’, and the perennially apt- ‘caveat emptor.’

Just now, Loew’s Regency on Park Avenue is famed as the pied a terre of in-it-up-to-his-neck Trump minion Michael Cohen. For Keith McCullar and me, this present scandal is an aside from one of our favorite features of Loew’s Regency, its basement serving as it once did as the venue for Michael Feinstein’s cabaret. An extraordinary talent himself, he booked in some great performers during times he himself was not onstage. I don’t think I am going out on any kind, for the benefit of the cognoscenti, an ‘outing’ limb, but a fair old number of the performers were if not divas then at least ladies part of a grand Broadway tradition, and one of these was Carol Channing.

As luck sometimes has it, we happened to be in New York and staying at Loew’s Regency, as I had been invited to speak at an interior design conference at the nearby D & D Building. We were unaware that Carol Channing was performing literally under our noses until we checked in, and I have to admit, it was Keith who insisted we change our evening plans to take in her show. What we would have missed had Keith not prevailed! A sidebar- Keith has had me under his thumb for the last 38 years, so for those of you interested in these kinds of things, he has long since prevailed.

To start with, Feinstein’s in that location was intimacy itself- a real cabaret, dark, and painted a deep red, and seating at most 60 people- virtually all ringside. We booked on the day but nevertheless had a great table the two of us, good food and plenty to drink. For me, sluggard that I am, this is usually enough to guarantee a satisfactory night out. Well, hold on- then there was Carol herself.

What a performer. I am bankrupted for superlatives. She came on stage and her friendliness was a perfect match for the intimacy of the room. We felt as though we’d gone to an afterhours mixer. She sang, she danced, she told jokes, she told stories. Her show was themed ‘The First 80 Years are the Hardest’, and despite the fact that Miss Channing was then 84, the show was a tour de force. A funny aspect, though, as an octogenarian she could recount stories of fabled performers that predated her and one of these was Tallulah Bankhead. As Miss Channing told it, in her early days on Broadway she was so keyed up after performing she’d have trouble sleeping at night. Once Miss Bankhead came back stage, and Miss Channing confided this to her. ‘Dahling, do as I do, and just pop a tablet or two of phenobarbital’. ‘But Miss Bankhead, aren’t they terribly addictive?’ ‘Nonsense, dahling- I’ve been using them every day for nearly 30 years.’

Seated behind us at a table alone was a small, dark man of a certain age who, from time to time, would shout something or other to the stage, and we initially thought he was a heckler. In the fulness of time, though, Miss Channing had the spotlight turned on this gentleman who she introduced as her husband, and childhood sweetheart, Harry Kullijian. What we took to be heckling was actually just throwing Miss Channing the occasional line- and the doing of this, as far as we were concerned, was the only indication that perhaps she was not as young as she once was. We chatted with Harry at the end of the show and he asked me how I liked my entrée, which happened to be braised lamb shank. When I said I did he told me that the inclusion of this Armenian specialty on the menu was, recognizing his own heritage, his real contribution to the show.

In short order, Miss Channing was there, and the four of us chatted for barely a minute and the two of them were off. ‘Selfies’ I’ve always considered very, very common, and they were not then ubiquitous, but were I possessed of an iPhone and the presence of mind I would have overlooked my scruples and taken a snap of the four of us.

Miss Channing is now gone, and even Michael Feinstein’s cabaret has moved, now to be found in the basement of the old Studio 54. Many of the divas are now gone- the performer who followed Miss Channing was none other than Kitty Carlisle. But if Keith and I live as long as Carol Channing, neither of us will forget a moment of the fabulous evening we spent watching the fabulous Carol Channing.

In a fitting conclusion to the Chippendale tercentenary, The Furniture History Society has devoted its entire 2018 journal to current scholarship related to Thomas Chippendale the elder.

Arguably the most interesting of these journal articles was one penned by independent furniture scholar Ulrike McGregor. In it, she argues for Chippendale’s innovative use of newspaper advertising to puff not just the sales of The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director but also the Chippendale workshop generally. While as Ms McGregor lauds Chippendale’s entrepreneurship, kudos must be given her, as well, for her use of modern research methods to gain insight into Chippendale’s use of print media.

Using the British Library’s newly digitized Burney Collection of 17^th and 18^th century newspapers, Ms McGregor was able to collate the advertisements placed over time not just by Chippendale but his contemporaries. With Chippendale’s placements unique in their content, and extensive in their number, McGregor argues that this very much assisted in lifting Chippendale from obscurity and moved him into the vanguard of not only furniture design but into a position of leadership amongst the cabinetmakers of his day.

I would certainly not argue with anyone making a claim for Chippendale as an innovator, certainly in terms of the unique qualities and influence of The Director… and the success and longevity, despite many vicissitudes, of the Chippendale workshop. What does seem lacking if not entirely absent is an acknowledgement of the debt, quite literally, owed to James Rannie, Chippendale’s partner in the St Martin’s Lane workshop that was responsible for the extraordinary commissions that solidified the name Chippendale made for himself with the publication of his pattern book.

While McGregor acknowledges Rannie as Chippendale’s financial partner, she does so in so far as an ownership interest in the St Martin’s Lane workshop, and others cite the lease of the premises in the names of both Rannie and Chippendale, and date the beginning of the relationship from that time. However, there were clearly significant costs associated with not just the establishment of the workshop but also with the publication of The Director… that must have been fronted by someone. Indeed, prior to the opening of the St Martin’s Lane workshop, Chippendale occupied only meagre lodgings nearby shared with Matthias Darly, the engraver of the plates used to reproduce Chippendale’s designs. McGregor estimates just the cost of the initial advertisement of the publication of The Director… to have been between £5 and £7, and one is left to opine that cumulatively the extensive use of print advertising employed by Chippendale at this time must have cost much, much more. Indeed, McGregor cites forty-seven advertisements related to The Director… published between March, 1753 and December, 1754.

Although in contemporary Chippendale studies James Rannie is not the forgotten man, he is, I’d wager, the underappreciated man. It is generally assumed that Rannie was a man of property who brought only cash to the endeavors of Chippendale, but one wonders to what extent it was Rannie himself who gave primary impetus, supported by his own cash. What is known is that, upon Rannie’s death it was he who owned the lion’s share of the Chippendale workshop, such that it required the liquidation of the workshop’s stock in trade to satisfy the terms of Rannie’s will. Rannie was clearly not just a sleeping partner.

In fairness, though, there is little or no documentary evidence about the finances of Chippendale in the early years- and precious little later on- and nothing so far as is known about James Rannie from this early period, save his name jointly with Chippendale on the lease of the St Martin’s Lane workshop. The archives of Drummond’s Bank have but a handful of entries related to Chippendale, and nothing to do with Rannie. Indeed, very little conclusion about the start of the relationship between the two men can be derived but, as I have done so here, by inference.

At the conclusion of the Chippendale tercentenary, there still remains at least one skeleton, that of James Rannie, rattling around in the cupboard. Indeed, of the extensive advertising campaign that Ulrike McGregor cites, included are adverts published in James Rannie’s home country of Scotland, in Scots Magazine, Edinburgh Evening Courant, and the Caledonian Mercury. It will be an intriguing subject for future study to determine to what extent Thomas Chippendale sprang from obscurity, fully formed as a designer, craftsman- and self-promoter- or was aided and formed by the good offices and ample supply of cash of James Rannie.

For the benefit of those few of my gentle readers who don’t know, I reentered academia in the late 90’s at University College London, one of the constituent colleges of the University of London. Categorized by UCL as a mature student, I found that ‘mature’ was considered any one mid 20’s, returning to uni after a few years away. Some considerable distance from my 2^nd decade, upon returning my maturity was of the superannuated variety.

Jeremy Bentham’s ‘auto-icon’

Nevertheless, I found, as I still do find, UCL famous for its warmth and inclusivity. If ever one was concerned about British reserve, let me tell you it is absent at UCL, formed in the early 19^th century, as one might not know, as a dissenting option for those free thinkers who might have found the still operating medieval rubrics of Oxford and Cambridge stultifying. In the best tradition, UCL is yet sufficiently quirky, with the mummified remains of founder Jeremy Bentham still prominently on display.

Wilkins Building

Now I’ve made a pitch for UCL whilst simultaneously dishing Oxbridge, the matter at hand. Gay liberation was in its infancy in my original college career, but burgeoning when I entered UCL, so I thought it would be fun to express myself therein by involvement with what I took to be the college’s active gay student’s organization. I have to say, parenthetically, that I had assumed walking around during my initial interviews and first few weeks of classes, my never-failing gaydar was working at full strength. Mind you, I had to be circumspect at home about this, as my partner Keith McCullar had regularly opined my desire to return to uni was driven in part as an opportunity to pick up on what he termed ‘the young ones’. No, it wasn’t and isn’t but more on that later.

Bloomsbury Building

Even just a few years ago, no one used the now ubiquitous albeit fluidly changing abbreviation LGBTQ+, and the notice posted on the board at UCL’s Bloomsbury Building early in my renewed career announced the gay men’s group for an evening a few days hence, starting at 8PM, and I looked forward to attending. A bit of background for those of you not in the know- gay culture in England did then, and mostly does now, consists of socializing in pubs. Indeed, most social life in England does, with everyone loyal to their ‘local’, and bonding takes place around the consumption of beer. I knew all that prior to my attendance at the gay men’s group at UCL, but although I didn’t know anything about any upcoming agenda, and although there was nothing of the sort noted in the notice I’d read, assumed there would be some kind of program. I was wrong. I showed up, and paid £5 to a young chap I had never seen before to get in to a small-ish function room in the Bloomsbury Building. There were perhaps 20 other young guys there, none of whom I had ever seen before who though unknown to me seemed well known to one another. Cheap lager was available for purchase at the rate of £1 per bottle. Did I say ‘cheap’? I should have written ‘crap’. But I had a bottle all the same, sussing out that here, too, pub etiquette applied. I did see a fellow from my department who was there, and I tried to chat with him- not chat him up, but just tried to engage in polite conversation. I have to say, he was as uncomfortable as if I had outed him not just in front of his Tory family, but from the lectern during high mass. So much for that, so I wandered about the edges, looking for someone to talk to, as it was apparent that this get together was really no more than a piss-up.

I have to say, there exist gay men, and then there are very gay men, and although I have never considered myself any paragon of butchness, I would have been considered so in that company. ‘Nelly’ is not a term much heard these days, but I can think of no other that describes the young chaps who were there. In the fulness of time, though, there were a few other gents who came in that were at least more my age, so thinking that, though none looked familiar, at least common life experiences brought by a commonality of age might work for a conversation starter. Was I wrong! Pub etiquette, I found, was in this instance combined with gay pub etiquette, by which I mean, small talk was automatically assumed by the conversant to be chatting up and the mature attendees save my own self were there to shall we say plight their troth with the young ones. I was then an odd man in the course of the evening, and as odd man I moved myself out.

I did not know then, nor do I know now, who it was who organized any of this, but there was in a few weeks another notice posted for yet another gay men’s evening, and silly me, decided to go again. Actually, this was a decision made following some bit of reflection, thinking that perhaps as the first event was early in the term, it was just for social enjoyment, and any business would then get underway at a subsequent event. I also assumed that attendance would be greater, again thinking that the student community would have found their feet after a few weeks, and then be attending such like as the gay men’s evening. Also, in the finding of the feet category, I had inadvertently found shall we say activity of a salacious kind in select bogs at UCL. Although I do know enough about English culture to know that ‘cottaging’ in the Gent’s loo, then as now is a favored activity amongst gay English men- I thought if it was taking place with such shall we say abandon at UCL, it might be thought to at some point swell the attendance at the gay men’s beano. It was also, I have to say, a relief to find the welter of this kind of ‘society’ a confirmation of my own gaydar, questioning it as I had done based on the sparse attendance at the first gay men’s function.

Again, on all counts I was wrong. The second get together was the same as the first- same entrance fee, same crappy beer, same number, and mix, of guys, same no agenda. I stayed maybe an hour, left, and never returned- not in my remaining tenure at UCL.

The upshot of all this is, I never at any time felt demeaned, excluded, or otherwise dismissed whilst at UCL, and I must say, the department of the history of art knew me well, and knew my partner Keith McCullar well. Keith was at every department function, became friends, and is still friends, with my favourite tutor and thesis supervisor. There was nothing closeted about our relationship, but it was for all I knew a matter of indifference. Scholarship was what was taken seriously, then as now.

I write all this apropos the current edition of Portico, the UCL alumni magazine, and its brief squib on LGBTQ+ alumni. Interestingly, save one woman who read anthropology in the late 70’s and didn’t come out until recently the other three contributors were recent male graduates. All three of them cited UCL as providing a safe environment in which to come out- of note, though, it was the academic environment within the disciplines they chose to study that was welcoming, not any sort of auxiliary organization. I cite this not by way of saying that UCL failed to provide any particular outlet for the gay community, but as with my own experience, the culture and ethos of the college as a whole functioned as an outlet for the LGBTQ+, and don’t I know this firsthand. How much more inclusive could any institution be, than that something specific for gay students is hardly existent because it is- wait for it- irrelevant. And irrelevance of a positive kind.

And so it seems still to be. As mentioned, I was prompted to write this blog entry based on the recent print edition of Portico, which also contained an email address for the UCL Alumni Association for the establishment of a gay alumni group. I wanted to provide a livelink to the online edition of Portico and in particular to the article about gay alumni. Nothing exists of the most recent Portico online, however, with UCL per usual bringing up the rear in terms of 21^st century methods of communication. That sounds snide, but frankly, as with other bits of quirkiness, I find it strangely endearing. It might be that some benighted soul in the alumni office inadvertently delegated the task of establishing online communication to Jeremy Bentham. Even so, I did respond to the printed email address indicating affirmatively my interest in forming or at least being included in a gay alumni organization. I have yet to hear back, so presume Squire Bentham is slow to respond, or more probably the establishment of such a group is not a high priority. Indifference? I would prefer to think that it is, in the best UCL tradition, yet an example of positive irrelevance.

TEFAF has announced it will no longer utilize dealers and auction experts in its vetting process at its marque fair in Maastricht and its spinoff in New York, instead using museum curators, conservators, and independent scholars. ‘Independent’ is the key word here, as the presumption is that what still exists of an old boy network within the trade is at odds with the independently objective judgment that scrupulous vetting requires.

For us, and indeed for any other member of the accredited trade in art and antiques, participation in any fair is dependent on vetting, where material is examined for authenticity primarily by experts drawn from the trade. I am not aware of any dealer like us who would participate in any fair that is not vetted. Indeed, the criticism that is generally leveled at the virtual fairs that online platforms provide is that the material offered is not vetted, with those in the accredited trade posting material of quality and authenticity that can be vouched for, cheek by jowl with, shall we say, something less than equivalent quality and of questionable authenticity.

In fairness, unaccredited dealers who offer their gear either online or at unvetted fairs may not necessarily know if a piece constitutes the real deal or not. Part of the process of accreditation is dependent on the assessment of a dealer’s knowledge in his field of specialization, and not just the quality of his stock. He is, then, obliged of course to comply with a strict code of conduct, accurately describing the material on offer, including detailing any restoration. Then, of course, there are the schlockmeisters, whose objective it is to willfully misrepresent what it is they have to a gullible buyer. The ignorant dealer and the shady dealer both offering something other than the actual, both represent pretty much the same peril to a prospective buyer.

Even within the accredited trade, there does exist, as mentioned above, an old boy network with relationships established within the trade, where dealers whose knowledge and expertise are otherwise without question will perhaps overlook something- a significant restoration, a possible dating error, a specious attribution- if the dealer’s material being vetted is a buddy.

Or, on the contrary, if a dealer is not amongst the favored few, his material might be subjected to inordinate scrutiny, resulting sometimes in requirements to label his material with disclaimers and caveats that make the piece so labeled as not just unsaleable but tainted, and simultaneously tainting the reputation of the dealer. Unfortunately, we have first-hand knowledge of this kind of thing, with a fine quality piece we had at a fair vetted out, only to determine that a member of the vetting committee had a similar piece he wanted to have on offer, bashing our item to remove competition. A sidebar- in spite of being so angry at the time I nearly had a stroke, the nefarious dealer with whom we had this contretemps has recently gone out of business. The slimy bastard- and I mean this in the nicest possible way. We are, I say with some glee, still in business.

Unfortunately, TEFAF is sadly faced with trying to get ahead of recurrent and unsettling stories, some of them very, very prominent, about dealers well-established in the trade and prominent in very many TEFAF and similarly vaunted fairs, who’ve in the last few years sold questionable, albeit costly, pieces to both private and institutional collectors. I’ve written not so long ago about the vicissitudes of the centuries old Galerie Kraemer, a fixture in the Paris trade and a TEFAF darling, and one is reminded of the cobbled together horrors with high profile ‘attributions’ associated with the Pimlico Road dealer, the late and not entirely lamented John Hobbs.

What’s equally unfortunate, though, is the method by which TEFAF seeks to bring probity to the vetting process. By in large, I’d say that most museum curators and conservators will bring a certain amount of dispassion to the vetting process, without any of the ‘one hand washing the other’ obligation or competitive enmity dealers might bring as baggage. What I wouldn’t say, though, is that these experts are expert in anything beyond their own institutional collections. Dealers, and I include myself, look at very, very many more objects in very, very many more environments than do those in the museum world- and with a stronger motivation to get things right. A dealer makes a mistake in purchasing an item for stock, and he doesn’t pay the rent, or eat, for the next month or six. The museum curator makes a mistake, and the gallery wall tag is corrected, or at worst, the ‘mistake’ goes into the back room. If my gentle readers don’t know, most fine and decorative arts museums have considerably more in the back room than they do on the gallery floor.

Something I’ve said in the last paragraph, though, isn’t strictly true. Museum curators and those from more academic disciplines removed from the commerce of the art and antiques business might ostensibly be thought dispassionate, but one needs to remember that, when given the status of panjandrums, they will talk the most insignificant point of contention to death. I well remember colloquies at University College London and the Warburg Institute and reminded of the gleeful disputes (mostly unresolved) that were only interrupted by breaks- always taken on time- for tea and biscuits. People in the world of scholarship are always ready for tea and biscuits.

And indeed, although detached from the commercial world, there exists favoritism and strong enmities between scholars within the same discipline of intensities I would match with those similar emotions manifested by art and antiques dealers.

But it appears TEFAF’s decision to revamp vetting is fait accompli, with the arguments posited by me already given a good airing within the trade. As one well established dealer had it, at the end of the day, regardless of vetting the best fairs are dependent on the knowledge and integrity of the individual dealer, and it is the dealer in whom the prospective buyer should ultimately place his trust. As the saying goes, if you don’t know your jewels, then know your jeweler.