Clinton Howell Antiques, New York City - English antique furniture

I have just finished reading "The Master and Margarita", a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov which was written during the last twelve years of his life between 1928-40. It is a transcendant work, rich in allegory, satire and symbol. Would that I knew more of Bulgakov as well as the time period and Russian literature and I would perhaps have enjoyed the novel that much more. Regardless, it is an extraordinary read.

I am on my second Roberto Bolano called, "By Night in Chile". Bolano is also a satirist and his work is rich with complex characters whose meaning unravels page by page. And you want to read the next page to find out who these people are and what they mean. Bolano, unfortunately, died at the age of fifty, five years ago. His talent is crystal clear.

What my reading has to do with antiques is not so clear, save for cultural understanding, which is what I do as an antique dealer. I have worked to understand the 17th-19th centuries in Europe, visiting houses and museums, and learning about restoration, reading endless histories so that I can feel satisfied that I know what I am doing. It is a handle that I have to have to feel comfortable about being an antique dealer. With the novels that I read, it is a handle that I long to have on the rest of the world.

...is a novel by Roberto Bolano that is well worth the read. It is part detective novel, part suspense novel and a delicate and devastating swipe at the Pinochet era in Chile. I bought two books by Bolano and I look forward to the second one.

Great furniture can be a bit like an epic novel, but it can also be something that is out of the ordinary. Bolano's novel sort of sneaks up on you. I have a pair of rococo mirrors that do the same. They are obviously rococo, but they somehow seem different. They are, both in the way they are carved and in the way they are composed. A little thought and you can see how they are different. I like that about them.

The decorative arts are about interpretation of generally functional forms. I hate to be so non-specific, but some decorative arts are not at all about function. Nevertheless, there is a lot of nuance within those boundaries. Sometimes it is good, sometimes not so, but it is almost never boring. What is really interesting is that it hardly matters what style or era the piece is made in. How nice it is that styles don't march in lockstep.

A bank teller just asked me if Brussels was in France. The question threw me for a second as I couldn't imagine it being anywhere but in Belgium. The place where the great chocolate comes from, perhaps? Or might that be the other banlieu known as Switzerland? The mind rambles on.

I would like to say something germane about knowledge, and I will in a second. However, I want to mention this author I just discovered, Roberto Bolano with a tilde over the "n". His knowledge of South American literature leaves me, a confirmed gringo, aghast. What I have been missing is something I will try hard to re-align. His work is conversational, sort of stream of consciousness but quite coherent, never flight of fancy.

Knowledge is the essence of antique dealing. The only other thing it is about is taste. There are plenty of antiques out there that are not beautiful, some because they have been abused, and some because they were never beautiful in the first place. Good antique dealers have knowledge and there aren't that many out there. Count yourself lucky if you know one.

There is a lot going on in the English antique furniture business these days. Two of the more venerable dealers in the business are retiring and putting their stock up for sale this autumn. Jeremy and Hotspur of Lowndes Square in London are leaving the business for retirement. Their stock will be for sale at Christie's in November.

Speaking of Christie's there were two sales of English furniture at Christie's, London on Wednesday of this week. The earlier sale of the estate of Simon Sainsbury, the grocery heir, made over sixteen million pounds. The later sale, 12 Exceptional Pieces of English Furniture made over ten million pounds. Clearly, if you wish to buy retail, the auction houses are the place. Should your horizons need expanding and your wallet less exercise, you might drop in on a dealer to experience the wholesale side of the trade.

Finally, the Grosvenor House Fair will miss Jeremy and Hotspur tremendously. Two great dealers with consistently great things for sale are hard to replace. Charlie Mortimer's assertion that the fair is dying may be closer to the truth than even he realizes. One long time exhibitor confided to me that it just wasn't worth the investment from his point of view. Another told me that he might drop out for a year or two and yet another felt it just cost too much money. It would be hard to replace such a prestigious event but premature postmortems have a way of being wrong. Lets just say that the road ahead will be different than the road we have all been used to traveling on.

I received a response to my blog on Olympia and Grosvenor House Antiques Fairs from Charlie Mortimer who said, if he doesn't mind me paraphrasing, that the Grosvenor House Fair is a dinosaur on the way out. That may indeed be the case, but it is still a great fair and this year, more than ever, it was clear that some of the very best English furniture on the market was on display there. The fair has enormous cachet, no matter what Mr. Mortimer might think.

I don't think it serves the antiques trade well to denigrate a fair, particularly if it is a successful fair from at least the prestige point of view. Whether the promoters charge too much for a booth is a different question, but I would guess that Grosvenor House had a reasonably good attendance this year in line with previous years. Frankly, I hope the fair continues to hold the place that it has for years, because it engenders enthusiasm for the business that I am in. Long may it run.

I would add that dealers who do not do Grosvenor House, for whatever reason be it cost or too limited an inventory or the belief that it may be a dying fair (which I strongly disagree with) are no lesser for not doing it. Knowledge, the dealer's life blood, is not measured by which fair you are in. The idea is to keep being the best you can be and not worry about anything but one's own business. The rest will take care of itself.

I received a response to my blog on Olympia and Grosvenor House Antiques Fairs from Charlie Mortimer who said, if he doesn't mind me paraphrasing, that the Grosvenor House Fair is a dinosaur on the way out. That may indeed be the case, but it is still a great fair and this year, more than ever, it was clear that some of the very best English furniture on the market was on display there. The fair has enormous cachet, no matter what Mr. Mortimer might think.

I don't think it serves the antiques trade well to denigrate a fair, particularly if it is a successful fair from at least the prestige point of view. Whether the promoters charge too much for a booth is a different question, but I would guess that Grosvenor House had a reasonably good attendance this year in line with previous years. Frankly, I hope the fair continues to hold the place that it has for years, because it engenders enthusiasm for the business that I am in. Long may it run.

I would add that dealers who do not do Grosvenor House, for whatever reason be it cost or too limited an inventory or the belief that it may be a dying fair (which I strongly disagree with) are no lesser for not doing it. Knowledge, the dealer's life blood, is not measured by which fair you are in. The idea is to keep being the best you can be and not worry about anything but one's own business. The rest will take care of itself.

The two primary antique fairs in London in June are Olympia and Grosvenor House. Olympia opens first and is held in a large spacious exhibition hall. The booths are large and the goods are readily visible and in typical English fashion are generally decorated very well. Pelham Galleries, for example, gave up Grosvenor House to do Olympia because the presentation is so much more gracious. Grosvenor house, however, can't be exceeded for high quality English and that gold standard hardly quivered this year.

Olympia tends to be a fair where people come back and back just because there is so much to see. Most of the dealers I know did business virtually every day of the fair that I was in London. The atmosphere is relaxed, as a rule, making it a low key affair for any buyer. All the big buyers go to the fair because the quality runs the gamut from decorative to superb. It is a good fair to attend.

Grosvenor House, held in the Grosvenor House Hotel Ballroom, has a consistently higher quality of objects overall. It is the place for people who really care about high end furniture and objects. For example, Ronald Phillips Antiques had an entire wall of chinoiserie, almost making it look common place which it most certainly is not. Hotspur, in the booth across the way, had an extraordinary japanned piece as well. Godson and Coles had an exquisite carved mahogany settee dating circa 1755 and Jeremy had a wonderful sunburst mirrro by Thomas Fentham. I could go on. It was an impressive display. English furniture at this level is spectacular.

A decorator quoted in the NY Times last Thursday descried the "boring brown" of English furniture and how John Hobbs seemed above all that. I love that put down, particularly by a decorator of note. It belies their understanding and their ability. There is boring brown in American, German, French, etc. furniture. There are also Opels and Ferraris. So what?

Hobbs understood the dilemma and unlike his decorator counterpart, he could see potential in almost any piece of furniture, or so Dennis Buggins, his "restorer" claims. What is hard to understand is just how all this million dollar furniture showed up at Hobbs' out of the blue. In this day of non-stop information on the internet, you would think that some of his furniture would show up in some sale catalogue somewhere? I guess some of the decorators and agents who bought from him are sweating bullets. And so they should be.

I have to admit that it is human to want fantasy. Antique dealers will walk into salerooms from time to time and espy a piece at a distance and their blood will start to rush straight away. The mirror I tried to buy near Liverpool last year was like that, only it was real and cost a lot of money. You can forgive fantasy, but if you are spending your own money, you have to leave your fantasizing at the door. If you are spending someone else's money, the fantasy has reality. That's the problem.

This has to be the last in my articles relating to the revelations first made in the (British) Sunday Times and again, last week, in the New York Times. Essentially, a dealer has been accused of selling fake furniture by the man who made the fakes. The tremors caused by those articles continue to be felt as more and more of the clients of the featured firm are having items that they purchased examined for authenticity. There are, apparently, right things, but there are also a lot of wrong things.

None of this surprises me. The Hobbs brothers, John and Carlton, made their names in the 1980's by going to small sales and finding, and often bidding huge amounts, for items that were rare and wonderful, but in essence were no better than existing things already on the market or coming on to the market in major sale rooms. It was a bald faced attempt at branding the Hobbs name and it worked. As a writer for Art and Auction at the time, I received a call from them suggesting that I publish their name on every occasion that they did this. It was an attempt to establish their bona fides with the people in the world that counted, the rest of the antiques trade. It worked.

Their establishment as connoisseur dealers in the eyes of the rest of the world became a function of getting into the top shows, which they did and courting the top decorators and collectors. In a way, their rise to the top was a marketing miracle, particularly as the rest of the antiques trade was laboring away, buying against one other and generally doing business as usual which is to say, bit by bit. This is how business is done--gradually. Unfortunately, this was not how it has been done at least for one of these brothers. It is a very sad tale.

With the publication in the NY Times this morning of the article "As Good as Old?", by Christopher Owen and Christopher Mason, it is clear that something is afoot in the world of antiques that is not kosher. I don't wish to sound cavalier about the revelations in the article, because they are very damaging, not just to John and Carlton Hobbs, but to the entire antiques trade. It is a sad day for the trade, but it does not characterize the trade in general at all.

I have written about how I am dismayed by the way antiques associations respond to situations such as this. The reactive nature of the associations does nothing to stem abuses by dealers, but, in a way, it is almost impossible to stop someone who is bent on perverting the system of trust that marks the trade. I have to admit to not having cordial relations with either of the brothers, their choice not mine, as they thought I was undermining them in some fashion. Perhaps I should have been.

The article notes that the Hobb clients are a list of top flite decorators. Their reactions range from shock, no comment to blase. They are all understandable as it is hard to grasp just how much has been destroyed by these events, but I for one would be calling my clients today to let them know the gist of events. I might also let them know that in the future, a trip to London to buy antiques would be better served by a trip to New York. It is cheaper, there are a lot of antiques to buy and New York is still a fun town, even on a holiday weekend.

The interesting thing about being a part of a profession as loosely knit as the English antique furniture trade are the unwritten laws that exist in regards to the loyalty one owes to the trade. Within the economic pyramid of the trade, it is the dealers who are at the top and who are, allegedly, deserving of the greatest fealty, with those at the bottom deserving less just because of who they are. Restorers, for example, are supposed to fall on their swords for the dealers. Why? Because the trade keeps them in business.

There are flaws in this model. Greedy people will always be greedy people. Selfish people will always be selfish people. The same, of course, can be said of liars and thieves. Should one dealer, therefore, who is called into look at something another dealer has sold, tell the truth, or not? This is the crux of a problem that besets the trade. There are dealers who expect others to stand by them for the sole reason that they are both in the trade. Why should they? This is all quite simplified because there are dealers out there who are no more capable of looking at a piece of high end English furniture than flying to the moon and one of those people can wreak havoc by being overly opinionated. When, however, it is dealers who know what they are looking at, should they not say anything?

I was called by two English restorers recently who told me a story about the brothers who were formerly partners and one of whom was profiled in the Sunday Times three or four weeks ago as, essentially, a fraud. Apparently, the restorers did a job on a table that the two brothers did not like. Or, at least, that is what the brothers said as they took away the table and threatened to sue. Within several months, that table was in Country Life magazine being advertised in the state that it had been restored to. The brothers never paid the bill to the restorers and the restorers are thinking of doing something about it now. The chickens do come home to roost eventually. How many other stories are out there about these two?

Criticism that stems from people within your own business is very serious. But the antiques trade has largely shrugged off any responsibility to the buying public by not acting to curb rogue and upstart dealers. Instead, there are associations that you are invited to join. It is a genteel and antiquated way of saying something, what exactly, is not quite clear. I wish I knew what the answer was.

The question that begs asking concerning the current nightmare besetting the antiques industry but which is really about one of two brothers, one based in London and the other in New York (they were partners at one time) is just why the London based dealer's reputation was so wonderful. Was it his goods, his prices or his personal magnetism? Why does his reputation stand out as being great given all the other very good dealers that are out there? In short, it doesn't. He just created a myth that people bought into.

Inevitably, because of past association and a shared surname, the New York based brother is facing difficulties which he is answering by a press release offering, "Authentication Guarantees". I thought that was what a bill of sale was, but then PR is very important and this may serve to quell or even quash rumors associating him with the pecadilloes alleged to have been committed by his brother.

The New York based brother has devoted clients--I have met several of them over the years. However, I know that he has benefitted tremendously from agents, be they "experts" or decorators who have brought clients to him. These are the people that he is most in danger of losing by any whiff of scandal and they are extraordinarily important. The "authentication guarantee" might be enough to save these clients and it might not. Time, on this story, will tell.

A noted New York antique dealer has decided to offer authentication guarantees to his customers of the last 15 years. The reason for this unusual offer is due to a scandal that has beset his brother in London about whom an article appeared in the Sunday Times in London a number of weeks ago. In it, the dealer in London is alleged to have had antiques made to order by a restorer in Kent. The story refuses to die and since the brother in New York was once a partner of his brother and shares his name, he has taken the unusual step of offering authentication guarantees.

The antiques trade is unregulated. The British Antique Dealers Association (BADA) in England is reactive, not proactive, about its members. Complaints are settled in a relatively genteel fashion. In America, the Art and Antique Dealers Association of America and the National Antique and Art Dealers Association are also reactive. Some years ago, when a member of NAADAA was accused of misrepresentation by a customer, NAADAA only expelled the offending dealer from its ranks, a simple and noneffective antidote to the situation. The brother in England is allegedly being investigated by BADA, but the brother in America has no ties to any organization.

If all the bad press is true about the English brother, it is sublimely ridiculous that he could have remained in business for so long. If it is true, he is a distinct problem for the antiques industry. I have stressed that the antiques business is about trust, but realistically, if you can get a notable and wealthy client to promote you, the battle of gaining trust is virtually won by default. What is scary is that the brush of praise is fine and focused on the alleged "great" dealers and that the brush of scandal, rumor and negativity is broad and tarnishes all dealers indiscriminately. I can only hope that the antiques trade is not tarnished by this episode. I would not, however, hold my breath on this account. 

People are choosy about who they want to lead them. In truth, people are of two minds about their leaders. One part says, thank God, I don't have to lead this group and the second part says, I could do better than he/she with my eyes closed. The honest part is the first thought, the second part possibly, but probably not, being true. The "calling" to be a leader is a very special thing, after all, not something your average joe really gets.

I belong to two antique associations, one of which has just held elections and the other is just about to. One election was decided in a vote by the board and the second election by a group of former presidents who chose a "slate" of board members and officers. If there is anything more useless than antique associations, it is the people who lead them. I should know, I am one of them although I have been summarily dismissed fron one board. Phew! I was beginning to think I might have a "calling" after all and my self importance was beginning to rub off on my colleagues. Now, however, I am only half as important and that is a relief because too much deference can lead to ego related problems. If only the other board would ditch me, I might re-enter normalcy which, for an antique dealer, is self delusional.

What I really love in a leader, of course, is testicular fortitude. Men are known for great decisions as a rule and I gather it has been determined that Hillary has testicular fortitude and therefore makes good, tough decisions at any hour of the day or night. Sort of like our current president whose testicular fortitude has never been questioned. That IS what we want in a leader, testicular fortitude. Or maybe not. I knew I should have considered politics over being an antiques dealer.

The reaction to what I wrote about Tom Devenish is quite interesting. Whatever those reactions have been, however, I have to say that I did the best I could to tell the truth. The truth has many versions, but I seem to have struck a chord. Tom made people uncomfortable because he was always willing to shout, swear or insult for seemingly no reason. He also knew how to be charming, but that was just a tool in his bag. It was all great gossip, but it was tiresome.

I think we see versions of Tom all around us, seldom in greater degree, but often in lesser. If we look at our presidential candidates, two of three of them seem to want to be president for themselves, not for their country. When I read that the Clintons made one hundred million dollars in the last seven years, I blanched at the thought of Hillary being president. Dynasties entrench the bad characters as readily as the good--look at our current president's plight as the rats depart his ship claiming (a few of them at least) his incompetence. (I would agree with them, but I wouldn't single George by himself.)

Truth has a shifting shape that every person accords their own dimesions. I would say that it hardly matters whether someone that is dead is accorded honors or scorned. They are gone and their descendants have their own reflections, good or bad. I have taken it upon myself, not without a good deal of thought, to define a legacy. I don't think I am too far off the mark.