Author: Michael Chappell

We’ve today received the umpteenth invitation to ‘join’ some kind of online shopping platform, placing our stock amongst virtual storefronts of what are claimed to be similar dealers, likewise offering their inventory. Our experience with the online platforms, for those of you interested, range in the main from the execrable to the marginal, with some nakedly offering looks- like- but- isn’t material that is well-worn, but not really old.

Over the course of the last five years or so, I’ve lost count of the number of similar invitations, but for right now, we average nearly one a week. So if using this is some kind of benchmark, something in the region of 50 sites of this type are now being launched annually, to say nothing of those already in existence. Mind you, these sites are likewise dropping like flies, but as with these metaphoric flies, they seem for the moment a perennial, perhaps overarching, fixture on the decorative arts scene.

Bear all this in mind when one likewise considers the fate of venerable repositories of honest to goodness period material and artwork, and the places wherein one might acquire same. The venues traditional to traditional material- San Francisco’s Jackson Square, London’s Fulham, Portobello, and Pimlico Roads, and Paris’s Quai Voltaire, to name just the number my gentle reader would be willing to read without the glazing of the eyes- have nearly disappeared. The auction houses are under threat, too, shedding staff, reducing locations, with even venerable Sotheby’s, hard pressed, offering their New York headquarters for sale.

But what of all this? One can come to a simplistic conclusion, that it is expensive to maintain bricks and mortar and cheaper by far to develop and offer fine and decorative arts online. And to form a basis of comparison, separating, as it were, the valuable wheat from the worthless chaff? Nearly impossible online- where quality material is offered cheek by jowl with vintage material, the differences between the two tend to become muddled for the occasional shopper, and discrimination becomes primarily price driven. Unfortunately, for the novice collector and the interior designer working within a budget, price sells. Value for money? Well, no… what can one expect when, shopping price alone, one ends up with what is basically used furniture?

Unfortunately, all of this then becomes a firestorm, with good quality period material and those who sell it dumbing down their inventory if they can, or attempting valiantly to offer it online on one of dozens of platforms, and hoping, too often vainly, that the merits of what it is that’s on offer can be sussed out in preference to what is just cheap. And the cheap gets featured in the design editorials that are an integral part of most of these websites, which then piques an interest in and breeds a demand for more cheap pieces.

And the firestorm intensifies. The venues and their traditional population get fewer and fewer by the day, and the decorative arts platforms proliferate only to burn hot until investor money runs out, and the buyer ends up with cheap cack. I suppose everyone needs something to hold in abeyance for the next yard sale.

Interestingly, I read yesterday in one of the trade publications of a young man who just opened up a shop in London, near to Lots Road. In these times, the opening is noteworthy in itself, but sadly, his storefront replaces that of a dealer who had just bitten the dust. Still, he claims his shop is opening in response to a demand for quality pieces by millenials who are reacting from what he terms ‘the throwaway mentality’ with the actual storefront, in preference to the virtual, a venue for browsing, interface, and the development of connoisseurship.  Good on him, and hope that this is a harbinger of change from on the cheap to a welling, long lived- and long overdue- demand for lasting value.

We’ve embarked on our Summer Sale, something that I annually look forward to, and not just for the influx of a bit of the ready at a time of year when our cash flow is at a low ebb. Well, maybe the money is the thing I most look forward to, but the increased contact with people who visit us primarily during sale time is a good thing, too, as are the concomitant comments.

I’ll try to leave the alliteration alone, but suffice to say something we’ve heard annually for as long as we’ve had our Summer Sale is the sorrow at the decreased level of interest in decorating with period furniture, in preference for other styles. And we’ve for just as long had the same rejoinder, that with the preference for internet shopping, anyone with money to spend is spoiled for choice. Not just period material, but things as far afield as the vague looks-like- but- far- from -is offerings proffered by Pottery Barn and Wayfair.

But the fact is, in our efforts to market we may be functioning to extend these condolence comments in the use of period vignettes, trying as we do to give some sort of context to the items we offer. As we will often have as many as ten different pieces- one or two large furniture items, ‘fluffed’ with say 7 or 8 decorative items- it does perforce give some kind of overdone, Victorianized feel to what it is we sell. Our alternative, and one we try to integrate into our marketing efforts from time to time, is featuring a single item, but I have to say we do this judiciously, as the result can often times seem very stark and sterile.

Beyond just saying so, it is difficult to communicate to prospective buyers that in fact most of our material goes to homes that will utilize just one, or maybe at most a handful of period pieces integrated into what is easily recognizable as a contemporary interior. There are likewise a handful of interior designers that can successfully pull this off, but rather than naming names and risk offending those I did not name, I would suggest picking up World of Interiors, the Conde Nast shelter magazine published in England that has habitually done a masterful job of using period and contemporary materials in its editorial and ad features.

For us, though, with a limited access to Philip Johnson or le Corbusier designed homes in which we can deploy and photograph for promotional purposes our stock in trade, we’ve attempted over the last few months to stay abreast of social media, and more importantly, to provide a virtual Johnson -Corbusier matrix through the design of our own website. Will this ameliorate the inadvertent effect of vignettes? Time will tell of course, but of whatever stripe or context, we welcome all comments, even those unaccompanied by cash.

Blouin Art Market Info is reporting this morning on the effect of Brexit in the world’s art market. The opinions cited range from ‘unclear’ to ‘business as usual’. It is difficult to read into these responses anything approaching the ‘remain’ camp’s sky is falling, immediate and gruesome end of life as we know it predictions.

What we’ve seen, and what soon to be former Prime Minister David Cameron certainly should have seen, is a desire on the part of a surprising majority of the electorate to be shed of yet more government, and a desire for a pared-back government to be- what a surprise!- responsive to and working in consonance with its constituency.

With European financial and currency markets taking an initial dive, and then fairly quickly bouncing back, the casualties amidst all of this appear predominantly to be entrenched politicos in Great Britain, and, if Brexit is contagious, which seems likely, there should deservedly be amongst most senior European government  leaders, and all Brussels functionaries, a rapid movement toward updating their CV’s and finding other work before being turned out en masse.

With that query, everyone in England beyond the age of three would realize that the speaker was about to pour tea. Since the early years of the 19^th century, tea service would have been the province of the lady of the house who was invariably wife and mother, perhaps not assisted, as would have been de rigueur a generation earlier, by a footman in livery to pass and carry.

It seems terribly formal all of this, but the early years of the 19^th century saw the proliferation of a middle class, wealthy by the standards of today, but who nevertheless were without the army of servants that attended the aristocrats of an earlier day. That this lack of human buffers in the form of servants bred an informality in domestic comportment is easy to understand- one’s behavior was less driven by a fear of what the butler saw.

As intended- sofa table in front of a settee, with a silver tea urn.

As with so much else, change in circumstance, and change in social convention, likewise wrought a change- actually a development- in accoutrement. One such development was the sofa table, the ubiquitous element of every drawing room by the end of the first quarter of the 19^th century. Designed to be placed in front of a sofa, it was of a height to allow for the pouring and service of tea while the hostess herself was conveniently, and demurely, seated. With parlour chairs near about easily pulled up to the sofa table, several people at once would be able to enjoy the late afternoon staple it would become by the end of the century. As it was invariably meant to float in front of a sofa, the sofa table is double sided, often with working drawers, meant originally to contain table linens and serviettes. Opposite the ‘business’ side are generally faux drawers, meant to provide a pleasing aspect to the piece for those viewing it from the front.

As used- behind a sofa, a casual bookshelf. Courtesy of Colefax and Fowler.

In the 20^th century, though, the fashion gradually changed for low tables, so-called ‘coffee’ tables, to be placed in front of the sofa. Style of dress, and style of comportment, changed and the proliferation of soft furnishings made it possible to lounge about, comfortably bend over, and pick up a book, and set down a cup of coffee, cocktail glass, or champagne flute.

The sofa table, then, migrated to the rear of the sofa, serving most typically now as the support for a table lamp or two to provide illumination for those seated in front of it, and the side with the faux drawers, now of even less use than before, placed against the sofa. A side note- this now typical placement has, a century or so on, resulted in very many sofa tables sun faded on their ‘business’ side, but shielded from sunlight, retaining something close to their original, native colour on the reverse.

For all Americans, it is right and proper to stand with Orlando, and understand that the gay community there has, as have gays and lesbians worldwide, been the target of an unreasoning hatred and discrimination that continues to result in violent death.

While the widespread expressions of sympathy are certainly appropriate and well-meant, they do at their core very little to counter the larger issue- that hatred and violence in America is institutionalized, and that a hardcore of our citizenry, wrapping themselves in the Constitution, allow the public sales of weapons that serve no purpose than to kill our innocent fellows.

Xenophobic rhetoric does nothing but add to this climate of hate which, in this most recent incident, the gay and lesbian community has borne the brunt, but what of Sandy Hook? What of Virginia Tech? Terror was wrought by those whose unbalanced states of mind was given a means to an end by killing machines in the form of assault weapons easily obtained.

I grew up in a sporting family, where shotguns and rifles were around and used to hunt game. As a child, precedent to obtaining my first hunting license, I attended, along with my fellows, a hunter safety course prepared and sanctioned by the National Rifle Association. The takeaway from this course was- guns are lethal. There was no underlying political message, nothing to the effect that Americans have a sacred right to possess an assault rifle, an instrument of terror that, if used in its prescribed manner, could kill dozens of people with one sustained pull of the trigger.

What’s happened? Why do we now feel the political necessity to defend and continue without remorse to legally sanction the ease with which we are able to kill one another?

No one would deny the existence of enemies outside our borders, who, once inside, would seek to do harm. But that is beside the immediate point- what happened in Orlando, no matter how the story is spun, was mass murder committed with firearms purchased legally in this country.

The flags will soon be flown at full staff, the vigils will cease, and the gay freedom flag will be less prominent on social media. What will remain, though, unaffected by grief and mourning, is the ability to purchase assault rifles and the odds-on certainty of another Orlando.