notes

While Michael convalesces, a reprise of an earlier blog

Something that Keith and I do a lot, and always enjoy, is making a housecall. If at all possible, we visit the premises where one of our sold pieces will be installed, when it is installed, to give it a once over, make certain there’s been no damage in transit, and wax what needs to be waxed and polish what needs to be polished. As long as we’ve been in business, we’ve never installed anything where the homeowner, no matter how busy, grand, or vaunted, was not there to greet us.  I’m not letting my ego run away with me here- this has very little to do with anyone’s desire for time with the Chappell visage, but more probably with the level of intimacy established between dealer and buyer.

The why of this, ostensibly, is that one has sold something that will be on display in an intimate space- the buyer’s home. Even the most public of people still consider their own homes to at least some degree their sanctum sanctorum. From clothes closet to foyer, the notion of a person’s home being their castle encompasses what is a basic touchstone. And that one’s possessions articulate with that psychically castellated space functions to make home and furnishings an outward manifestation of one’s personality. This starts to sound like all our clients are megalomaniacs, but, frankly, in our experience, none of them are. In fact, when we make a housecall, as we did this last week in Houston, the powerful lady and gentleman homeowners were supremely gracious, and eager to discuss their collecting passions and objectives. As their purchases from us were adjuncts to their already established collecting foci, we had lots to talk about. This is what’s known as ‘common ground’.

But it’s substantially more than that- it has to be, as discussions and concomitant relationships with clients go on for years and years. In this age of the internet where it may only be the first purchase that is consummated in our galleries and subsequent purchases made online, one would assume that the connection between dealer and collector would wane. To date, I’m happy to say, it hasn’t. While we love what we do, and are fascinated by the objects we sell and feel a connection with the material culture in which they were wrought, this is all very much part of a continuum that involves that part of the bilateral relationship manifested in the housecall.

While Michael recovers, here’s an earlier blog

How goes the old Wall Street aphorism- bulls and bears get rich, but pigs get slaughtered. Sage, perhaps, but financial sagacity is not my strong suit. Nor that of plenty of other people, particularly in the fine art and antiques trade, with this last year or two cluttered with disbursal sales of former dealers. It’s been an interesting experience, Keith and I chatting with those of long tenure in the trade, discussing how items used to be passed from dealer to dealer, with some kind of mark-up each time it traded hands, until it reached an eventual buyer. The new transparency in the marketplace for art and antiques brought about by information technology is, to my way of thinking, not entirely a bad thing. Mind you, price shopping in the art world is pretty tough, as the price differential between a good object and a similar though superior object is measured exponentially.

But, of course, quality and pricing make for good talking points with clients. I hope my colleagues in the trade agree with me, that discussion about the merits of a piece of furniture or artwork ultimately assist the client to make the right decision and the dealer that assists in that process has established a relationship, and not just accomplished a spot sale. We’ve found generally that sales these days are accompanied by lots of discussion, including plenty of specific questions about our stock, about the trade generally, and the nature of connoisseurship. Although times being the way they are, my venal self would like to jump ahead to closing the sale, but the process of bonding through long discussion has had, for me at least, the beneficial effect of keeping me on my mettle. Discussion, research and explanation assist not just the development of connoisseurship in my clients, but significantly improves my own, and ultimately makes me a better dealer.

While Michael recovers, here’s a reprise of a prior blog entry

For my handful of devoted readers, harken ye back to my entry of a couple of weeks ago, wherein I chastised those punters who ask, for wont of anything better to say, for the unusual.

Well, we have it, and ‘unusual’ is said with an attenuated Hitchcockian accent, appropriately enough, because it is an item associated with the great man, albeit tangentially. Specifically, we have acquired out of the stock of Warner Brothers a George III demilune pier table of large size, well known to many of you, whether you know it or not, the result of its prominent placement in the Alfred Hitchcock film ‘Dial M for Murder’. With the movie itself taken from the play of the same name, cinematically it’s what’s known as a ‘rug show’, with all the action taking place indoors, in this instance in just two rooms of the fictional London apartment in Maida Vale occupied by the main characters, played by Grace Kelly and Ray Milland. We’ve got some great photos of Grace Kelly looking harried and Ray Milland deceitfully calculating- with the pier table prominently behind.

Although Warner’s, along with MGM and Paramount, would import vast quantities of European antiques for use in set decoration, it is interesting to note that this piece was actually purchased from ex-star, prominent antiques dealer, designer to the stars and progenitor of the Hollywood Regency style, Mr. William Haines. As well as the Warner Brothers inventory mark, the piece also has a label from Haines-Foster, then located in exquisite premises at 8720 Sunset Boulevard. It was an astonishing place. Purpose built for Haines, with a colonnaded façade and curved display windows, Haines served the ne plus ultra in the industry, with prominent commissions from Joan Crawford, George Cukor, and Louis B. Mayer’s daughter and son-in-law, Bill and Edith Goetz. Haines was also the antiques purveyor to and designer for Jack Warner, whose grand new house designed when Warner married his wife Ann replete with Haines-selected fine quality English antiques.

In this case, though, the pier table connection between William Haines and Jack Warner is incidental, but more substantially linked to the set designer for ‘Dial M…’, the redoubtable George James Hopkins. A designer with a career in movies that lasted from the late teens into the 1970s, Hopkins work, mainly at Warners, included some stunning sets- ‘Auntie Mame’, ‘My Fair Lady’, and- wait for it- ‘Casa Blanca’. In his salad days, he was reputed to have had an intimate relationship with the director William Desmond Taylor, whose yet unsolved murder has always conjured up lurid associations with drugs and unconventional sex. Don’t you just love the movies?

The 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.

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.