Clinton Howell Antiques

Thoreau's, "Walden", is an American literary tour de force with environmental writing that is green even by today's standards. He comes across as an enfant terrible, idiot savant and contrarian all wrapped in one package. I wasn't phased a bit when a friend told he cheated and did not stay the whole time at Walden. In fact, it made perfect sense that he was imperfect in his cause. It is his observations of nature, however, that make Thoreau so interesting, not his philosophical or sociological diatribes, his great erudition notwithstanding. He sees harmony in the illogical battle of red and black ants and debunks the superstition of the alleged limitless bottom of Walden Pond--these moments are his raison d'etre, his key to the understanding of the cosmos.

The Lunar Society (1765-1813) was a group of men who met in order to improve their own and ultimately man's better understanding of the natural world. They were one of the many keys that helped accelerate the Industrial Revolution. Some of their members such as James Watt whose perfection of the steam engine allowing its adaptation to industry and Matthew Boulton who helped build those engines (along with incredibly fine gilded candelabra purchased by the King) had a direct hand in the process. These men were observers of the natural world and, in a way, direct forebears to Henry David Thoreau.

The ability to see patterns in nature and to identify detail are intrinsic to the development of civilization allowing for the domestication of plants and animals. But as it is clear that the self described "lunaticks" used their knowledge to better man's lot, it is equally clear that Thoreau saw man losing sight of the lessons of the natural world to man's detriment. Both Thoreau and the lunaticks saw that the focus on nature would help dispel superstition and supercilious conventions to the benefit of man. It is the essential starting point for making dreams into reality. Creativity doesn't have a better starting point.
 

The presumption that regulation strangles creativity can be true. Everyone knows that committees are the perfect way to create snafus. The word, snafu, in fact was coined in the army, a regulatory nightmare in the eyes of many. But the military also recognizes the need for hierarchy, boundaries, and, of course, regulations. In the broader context of our society, it is clear that unfettering capitalism from regulations can lead to growth but at what price? The absence of regulations result in businesses that are too big to fail.

In the first quarter of the 18th century, there was a financial scandal called the South Sea Bubble which was hinged to the rights of trading in South America. The venture was agreed upon by Britain and Spain and was never successful even though the British government guaranteed returns on the money invested in the venture. Basically, it was an ill thought out venture that turned into a sort of Ponzi scheme. There was a huge fallout with many government ministers resigning and the econmy going into a nose dive. It became a matter of who knew what when as members of the government saved themselves and their friends first by divesting themselves of their shares at the height of the market.

There are people that may argue that our current economic malaise wasn't allowed to develop and that if it had, it would have created a better financial system. That is sort of like saying the best way to lose weight is not to eat. Of course it is, but there is a sensible way and a foolish way. The greed factor that enabled huge and illusory profits demonstrates a bent moral compass. The bible, not a place that I usually look to for guidance, inveighs against greed making it clear that man, ignoble as he is, needs guidance in all things. Creativity, I believe, can still find a place despite those strictures.  

A recent critique in the NY Times noted that Obama's jaunt to Europe was unsatisfactory as he failed to get the Europeans to enact a stimulus package, failed to get troop support in Afghanistan and acceded to the idea of regulatory agencies that might affect the sovereignty of the U.S. The sovereignty issue was huge in 1917 and still pretty large in 1950, but in 2009, it just isn't. After all, it was America's toxic assets in the form of sub-prime mortgages and insurance derivatives that helped spark the current economic meltdown. In truth, our system, capitalism per se, is enhanced by being a good global citizen. And besides, when has America not done exactly what it pleased?

The balkanization of the English cabinetmaking trade began around 1770. The burgeoning English middle class needed furniture and there were capitalists ready to supply it, people who flouted the rules of the Cabinetmakers Guild and used untrained people to make, for the most part, second rate furniture. Clearly, the lack of regulation affected these shops and the larger shops, realizing that there was a huge demand, started making various levels of furniture to compensate for this huge demand. It was the bandits, however, who broke all the rules using substandard quality materials to make second rate furniture. This trade began to be known as the "dishonorable" furniture trade and this is the furniture that is either shunned today or used as "breakers" for their old pieces.

The watchword for quality is regulation, at least for ongoing businesses. New businesses will fail if the idea is no good because a lot of people will dismiss the idea out of hand. But existing businesses that try to add new wrinkles to their old line are ripe for con men, just as the customers who buy those new wrinkles from their trusted advisors are ripe to be taken. Running with an idea is capitalism at its greatest, but running with a bad idea that makes money in the short term but costs in the long term needs oversight. This is why I wonder why anyone cares about sovereignty, at least vis-a-vis regulation. We are all in this together. There is no room for any dishonorable businesses today, even if they supply a short term demand.

 

The NY Times had a wonderful group of three editorials yesterday written by an Englishman, a German and a French woman. They were about President Obama and all, surprisingly, quite positive. The English writer, A.A. Gill, was characteristically snarky about a lot of things including the French, the class system in England, Gordon Brown the Prime Minister, Carla Bruni and English/French history. It was amusing and informative with a few nice jabs ending on a positive note for the American president, which might possibly be a first, or perhaps a first since FDR entered the Second World War.

The German writer, Christoph Peters, uses very long sentences full of polysyllabic words to analyze the current state of European angst. I remember reading Freud's case histories in college which were fascinating until I got to Freud's analysis. Then I would fall asleep. Similarly, the few German philosophers that I tried, Goethe in particular, had a similar affect on me. I would still like to understand him better, but alas...,

The French writer, Amelie Nothomb, finishes with a wonderful little billet doux to Obama. Her understanding is that envy, a great French motive for just about anything, should be eating at the French President Sarkozy. And the reason for this, she asserts, is Obama's dignity, a French raison d'etre if ever there was one. I knew I loved the French. I admit to loving the English and the Germans as well and I only wish an Italian editorialist had been enlisted. I might have learned something about style.

Whenever it rains like it did today at noon, I remember the camping trip I went on in upper Ontario. It was, I think, twenty-three days long, and I think it rained for three weeks of that trip. Not just a little rain, but a lot of rain and sometimes so hard that you could not see the other canoes. It was a wearying trip.

Weather is an part of an English person's persona. Ride a bus in any city after rush hour and the retirees on the bus will talk about the weather. I left England because of the weather. Five years of it cured me of the charm associated with perpetual late fall. I have often wondered if the weather affected the cabinetmaking trade in the 18th century. It must have in some way that I haven't thought of.

The things I remember on that canoe trip were the two moose we saw, one from about six feet away, the fact that the fish never bit and that the blueberries on blueberry hill were not that sweet. It was extremely miserable and I still remember the look on the customs man at the airport in Montreal when he asked to look in my back pack. He must have lived with that smell in his nostrils for at least a week.  

Carson McCullers' novel, "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", is about as bleak a picture of American life in the 1930's as could be imagined. Racism, economic uncertainty, adolescent angst, unrequited love and flat out despair are all rolled into one that leaves one with a cold sense of foreboding. "The Grapes of Wrath", Steinbeck's vision of the 1930's migration to California by thousands of share cropping farmers from the Dust Bowl, by contrast, leaves one with a sense of hope.

Frances (Fanny) Burney (1752-1840) was among the first English women novelists.  The daughter of Dr. Charles Burney, a well known musicologist and organist, her life included trials such as near fatal ennui as lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte and near fatal breast cancer where ten male doctors removed a breast without anesthetic. Her novels (the first of which was "Evelina") documented the improbability of romance between those of disparate economic backgrounds. Jane Austen took up where she left off. Her outlook, skepticism of class notwithstanding, is upbeat.

The America of the 1930's, particularly in the south, was a circumscribed place for many. McCullers expands and massages the theme with a relentless morbidity. Contrast that with the celebrated, "Forrest Gump", a movie determined to prove that opportunity was merely a matter of chance that almost anyone could pick up on. The line in between is Fanny's and is the one I prefer to follow.  

In reading Carson McCullers' "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", there is a torpid quality to the present for each of the characters. Mick Kelly, the thirteen year old girl who longs to learn about and play music, is the only character who remotely seems energized by the moment and her future. Even she, however, seems under some restraint that prevents her from being herself.

The future for an 18th century Englishman varied according to class. Laborers had very little future. Skilled craftsmen were slightly better off and shop owners inprisoned in class strictures. Professionals who endeavored to advance their knowledge such as the men of the Lunar Society basically lived the future through the scientific method.

Our future is certainly clouded by the economic crisis. The future is both longed for and expected and it is invariably rosy. The moment of now, of uncertainty and anxiety, is explained and examined, but it is deemed that it will end. Of course, that is true just as it is true that more crises exist as well. Perhaps we should focus on the now and fix it properly before we find ourselves in a Carson McCullers novel.

One of the great thing about traveling is seeing new things. I was able to go to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) nine days ago and was pleased with the building, display and with the special exhibition of William Kentridge. Kentridge is an intriguing artist whose work is probably best suited to a museum where you can see a lot of it, particularly his video installations. I can't say his images touch me profoundly, but I did enjoy watching his videos.

There is English furniture from the 18th century that is probably better seen in museums than anywhere else. On Thursday, I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington, London and looked, again, at the famous wall hanging, padauk veneered and ivory inset medal cabinet made by William Hallett for Horace Walpole. It is a really lovely little object that I would love to own and even more to sell, but it is such a spectacular thing, that I think it best for it to be in a museum. 

Contemporary art is intriguing for its utter lack of discipline. Of course, aficionados will say that I have an untrained eye, among other things, and that if I don't understand it, I should move on. My problem, if one could call it that, is that I want to look at things that don't necessitate any intellectual baggage, meaning that I want my art to look good, not require a handbook to understand. Could the same criticism be leveled at English furniture? It could to some extent and therein lies a rub for all of the arts. You have to get into it first and then you can be a critic.  

Ayn Rand clearly did not suffer fools lightly. If her protagonist in "The Fountainhead", Howard Roark, is anything to go by, she believed in the unswerving commitment to the ego and following it at any cost. Pity, in her eyes, was another four letter word and most of the emotional dimensions of a human being seem more necessary to defeat than to abide. But most of all, she abhorred submission and you can see why as Adolf Hitler was taking charge in Germany as she was writing this book.

Most of the antique dealers I know are humbled by the business they are in. Dealing in some of the things we buy and sell is clearly a privilege. Having knowledge about them is also a privilege. Coming across them unloved in an auction is a uniquely wonderful feeling. Seeing great things in another dealer's possession is both aggravating and gratifying. Having someone acknowledge something great that you own is extrarodinarily gratifying. The ego in all of this has to know its place.

Rand is a good storyteller, but "The Fountainhead" reads a bit like a morality tale and feels just a shade dated for the 20th and 21st centuries. Perhaps not, but I am not rushing out to buy her more famous work, "Atlas Shrugged", just yet.  

The nature of the moment has a great many people, if not scared, then extremely uncertain. It is hard to imagine how unexciting life was only a year or two ago by comparison. But that isn't the way it is now and, as anyone who has lived through any tragedy knows, it will eventually pass.

Tragedy, in the form of war, was a recurring theme of the 18th century. England did, however, manage to avoid war for nearly twenty consecutive years under the first Prime Minister, Robert Walpole (1721-1742). As far as furniture goes, it was a period of great maturation of style. Never again, at least from 1740 onwards, would England be beholden to slavishly copying the style of another country. Its craftsmen and designers could hold their own with those of any nation, Italy and France notwithstanding.

The economic slowdown is, I believe, as much a crisis of leadership as anything else. There is the need for those in the position of authority to look to how they do things. Their leadership must be based on thoughtful action. That would be nice for a change. 

I am getting a kick out of reading Ayn Rand's, "The Fountainhead". Her characters are all caricatures with broad brush attributes, none of which seems entirely wholesome. Roark, the protagonist, is unflinchingly honest to his muse which is architecture, but in every other way is lacking in humanity. Keating, the antagonist, spirals downward with Faustian deal after Faustian deal, with hardly a moment of introspection.

We all have a muse. People come into my gallery just to look because they like looking at old things. I enjoy the people and I enjoy telling people about my antiques. This is my passion and I am able to live it. Not many people are.

What I most enjoy about "The Fountainhead" is how modernist architecture, the book was published in 1943 and is written about the 1920's when New York's skyline was in its infancy, is the cause celebre and classicism, the evil stepfather. If Ayn Rand could have seen the modernist victory over classicism, the roles of the two schools of thought just might have been reversed. The pendulum does, however, continue to swing. 

It occurs to me that being worried about socialism at this point is a little like being worried about the sky falling. The U.S. Government has been in the socialism business for years and in such a way that conservatives, and quite a few liberals, think is just dandy. The Defense Department is the most inept socialist experiment that we have and everybody loves it. Projects are consistently over budget, virtually every procurer is a target for some form of lobbying, unprepared for war ("You go to war with the army you have...,") and everyone loves it. They all want to throw more money at it. We might just as well do a similarly inept health system as well. It can't be any worse than the current system.

As a business person, if I ran my business like the Defense Department, I would need a credit line of titanic proportions as well as a regular plan of debt forgiveness. I don't think, as an antiques dealer, that I will ever get either of those which means I have to be accountable.

This is the word that all those ideologues on the right and the left leave out when they talk about doing what needs to be done. I see accountability going out the window when corporations get so large that they don't know what they are doing, viz Enron, Madoff Securities, the list is just too long. Where were the accountable executives in those businesses? Why should I even have to ask? And the Defense Department? Keep on rolling...................

As a tall person, I find a number of disadvantages to being big. Trains and boats and planes are all uncomfortable forms of transportation. Clothing is made for average sized people making it quite difficult to find things that fit. I like being tall, but it is not a piece of cake.

William Doyle Galleries had an oversized Mason's ceremonial chair from the 18th century (I think--I didn't look at it too closely) in their January sale and I have to say that it looked freakish. Items that are out of scale, particularly overscaled items, can often look freakish.

Companies that get too large can also have a freakish side. That side is lack of control. It is clear that our banking system veered out of control. So did AIG and there are probably quite a few more ticking time bombs out there.

Ronald Reagan's belief that "government is the problem" has an ironic twist in these days. It is very clear that big business has an equal propensity to big government for screwing things up, ideology notwithstanding. I am quite certain that government does not have all the answers, but I am equally certain that big business doesn't have many either. Being big is not as easy as it looks.
 

I remember the great delight I had upon seeing the Guggenheim in Bilbao. It is an appealing sight, sort of quirky and unusual and distinctly eye catching. However, I thought the interior prosaic and no advance whatsoever on the display of art. Some friends disagreed with me, but they admitted that they were on a romantic weekend and said that they were biased for whatever else was happening in their lives. I do remember a program I saw on Gehry's building at MIT where he forgot to include closets. I think that observation reminded me of the exhibition space in Bilbao.

I know function when it comes to furniture. Chairs that have seats higher than 19" do not sit well with most people. Table tops over 30" that you sit at are also non-starters as a rule. I am not a stickler for detail, but functionality has boundaries for all of us.

I remember wandering around Buenos Aires thirty or so years ago and happening on a high end clothes shop one Sunday morning. I was the only person in the shop and the sales lady was determined to sell me a coat that was three sizes too small for me. Upon getting me into it, she, sweating from the effort, said, "magnificent". I took the compliment, but not the coat. 

In Wilkie Collins', "Moonstone", there is the delightful sentence of a thought unspoken by the head of Lady Verinder's household servants, Gabriel Betteredge, "I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason." There is nothing like an English servant in literature, and Betteredge is one of the better edges that I have found. I recommend the hubristic Betteredge for a good read.