Clinton Howell Antiques

To those people who believe that I think $1.2 million is small beer,  please understand that I would be delighted to be the recipient of said sum should someone wish to offer it to me. When I referred to the amount as insignificant in the John Thain story on Bloomberg News, I was not making light of that sum. I was doing a very human thing which was putting it in relation to the much larger sum that was  lost by Mr. Thain's firm and trying to make it clear that it was his decision making ability that was at fault, not his decorator and certainly not antiques that should be played up in the story of his excesses.

I have been in business for nearly thirty years and I never thought that I would see the landscape of the English, English furniture trade change the way it has in the last year. The latest business to close its doors is Norman Adams Antiques. One of the finest dealer exhibitions I ever saw was held on "Patina" in the basement of their gallery. Although there were perhaps only fifteen items on display, the exhibition made clear just what patina means and why it is one of the primary reasons so many people have collected English furniture. I will miss the camaraderie of the people in the firm, Stewart Whittington, Christopher Claxton-Stevens, Steven and Dey were all very warm to me on many occasions.

Another dealer, Andrew Jenkins of the firm Avon Antiques in Bradford-on-Avon, is closing his doors. Andrew is a top flight dealer, serious and dedicated and I guess he felt it was the right time to retire.  He was always a one man band so it is not surprising that Avon is closing its doors on his retirement, but it is another sad day for the English furniture trade.

On a lighter note, I remember a conversation I had with Richard Coles of Godson and Coles (one of the up and coming English furniture shops in London even though he has been in business for at least  twenty years) about the viability of modern design. I suggested that he might want to buy something modern for his gallery if there was something he saw in some auction that took his fancy. His response was, "The trouble is is that there is nothing as good as 18th century English furniture." I second him on that notion. Long may he run. 

I was interviewed by "The Magazine Antiques" last fall and the article has appeared in the January edition. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a copy on the newsstands, although I understand that the article is extremely complimentary. Thank you and if anyone at the magazine would like to send me a copy, I would greatly appreciate it.

The Winter Antiques Show begins a week from tomorrow, delayed by one week because of the inauguration of President-elect Obama (finally). I hope that the inauguration gives this nation a boost as we sorely need it. I recently finished "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin about Lincoln and his rivals for the Republican nomination for president in 1860. The challenges that Lincoln faced in 1860 make today's challenges seem, by comparison, insignificant. It wasn't that the secession of the southern states was so bad, but the political acumen necessary to bind the myriad groups in the north that wanted everything from the abolition to the legalization of slavery, seemed beyond human capacity. Lincoln seemed to take it in stride.

My most daunting challenge, other than drumming up business in this economy, has been in reading "War and Peace". It is a long and great historical novel and Tolstoy has many memorable phrases therein, the most apropos to today being, "...all happiness comes not from lack, but superfluity;". 

Listening to Rush Limbaugh on my car radio the other day at the behest of a passenger (who promptly fell asleep once the show started) I realized that Mr. Limbaugh says very little. The way he weaves his words is rather like those confectioners who know how to create line drawings in air with caramelized sugar. Essentially, there is very little there although the crafting of the confenction can take hours. Three hours a day for Mr. Limbaugh at least, I think.

John Fiske wrote about virtual reality versus tactile reality in his editorial in "The Antiques Journal" the other day. He makes a great case for the art boom of the last 10-15 years as being "virtual" in that people bought it for investment, knowing that its value would increase with the rising market. John likes to think that antiques, the ones you live with that is, don't fall into that category. You have to live with them and, if you grow tired of owning them, pass them on. If they increase in value, you have won a little bit more than you might have anticipated. If their value has decreased, you have still had the joy of them in your living situation. How incredibly far removed that is from virtual art that is bought for investment.

Limbaugh is, however, a virtual reality kind of guy. His show was about how scared he was that Obama did not know what he was doing. He called the press conference Obama had last Friday morning, "spooky". Whether or not Limbaugh was attempting a racist gibe, I found his cant to be singularly tedious as he kept beating the drum for the type of thinking that got us into trouble in the first place. What I liked about the show is how ineffectual Limbaugh actually is.
 

The value of antique furniture rests in part on its purity--is it still in the form it was when it was made and are all the accoutrements, hardware, etc. original? If it is original, it has greater value, although without going into details at this point there are exceptions to this rule. Hence, a piece of French furniture with gilded mounts is worth more if the mounts are original.

In talking with James Robinson, a restorer in Ashburnham, Mass. who has an extensive resume which includes many of the finest collections of English and French furniture around the world, he told me about a problem that seemed to have no answer at first blush. A commode he was working on had a set of gilded brass mounts that did not fit properly on the carcase. They looked like they should be slightly higher and yet there was only one set of screw holes showing that the mounts had never been moved. Were they later additions or replacements? He felt quite certain that the mounts were old and when moved higher, looked quite perfect for the piece.

Restorers are often not asked to go the extra mile when working. They are expected to conserve money as well as the piece they are working on, but this problem was perplexing. Eventually, James decided to pop off the veneer to look at the carcase to see if anything was amiss there and voila, there were the original holes for the mounts. Why had they been covered? The screws had broken off while being removed and that restorer decided to patch the veneer and lower the mounts. James pulled out the broken screws, three out of sixteen, reveneered the carcase and patched the incorrect holes and replaced the mounts. Problem solved.

Problems that seem insoluble happen all the time. The economy, for example, seems in such a Gordian Knot that it would be hard to imagine it ever returning to "normalcy". And whatever that state of normalcy is, we can almost never look at another price tag and just accept the value that is being presented to us therein. In the world of antiques, the value of something has never, in my opinion, been based on investment potential. Rather, antiques are to live with and enjoy, they are not an investment portfolio. For those people who have bought things as investments, I say, good luck, and for those people who have bought what they loved, I say, enjoy.

The history/fiction, "Augustus", written by John Williams and published in 1972 is written in epistolary form with letters and excerpts from diaries by the people around Augustus including Vergil, Livy, Horace and his daughter, Julia. It is an intriguing way to write history. The fiction may or may not be accurate, but it makes for an interesting way to learn about Rome of that era.

The finest part of the book is the penultimate letter written by Augustus to Nicholaus of Damascus, an old friend, in the week before the end of his life. In it, Augustus explains that everything he did, including the subsuming of his own character, was for the perpetuation of Rome and how, in that moment, he is unsure that what he did was correct. He comes to the conclusion that when you give people peace, they tend towards anarchy. The philosophy is certainly Williams', but in Augustus' mouth, it has great resonance.

It is interesting to see how history can give almost anything grandeur, or if not grandeur, a respect that it otherwise would not have. From a bed that George Washington slept in to the rock where the Puritans landed, the symbolism is undeniable. I don't think Augustus understood this symbolism, at least not according to Williams and it makes his last letter that much sadder. Because as much as Rome is the train, Augustus was the fuel and it was his personality that could have prevented his debauched successors including Tiberius, Caligula and Nero.

Antiques have a little of this power and I am glad that they do. They represent something other than what we believe today. They are from another time and place where people saw things differently and they symbolize, to some extent, the glory and perhaps even the tragedy of that moment. Furthermore, they continue to accrue more symbolism with every passing owner. It is a part of life that can't be seen, but which has great power.

I was surprised to see in a review of the new biography on V.S. Naipaul that Naipaul gave the writer complete access to all his papers as well as access to many unflattering papers written by his deceased wife and former mistress. I salute Naipaul for allowing the markers of his life to be so openly pored over. It is unusual that he did not try to burnish his image for posterity and restrict some of the less flattering material from the author.

Antiques, of course, are a marker from the past. Obviously, their character is far from human, but they are survivors. Survival of such markers relies on lots of different things, but in my opinion, at least as far as furniture goes, it is aesthetics coupled with inertia. Beauty can be ignored, but it is hard to trash and inertia is a powerful force for many. The destruction of all those country houses before and between the two world wars could have used a little inertia.

Most of the things that I sell are not that meaningful save for their aesthetic charm. At least, not as far as we know. They could have, at some time or times, in the past, been a favored piece of furniture, bought for reasons that resonated for years and years. I am almost certain that most of the pieces I am selling will one day have such significance. It is my raison d'etre.

George W. Bush is profiling himself as someone who is neither reflective nor introspective. Such moral certitude is reminiscent of John D. MacDonald's Good Samaritan, Travis McGee, who always knew what the right thing to do was. But then, Ahab and Othello were equally certain of themselves and it didn't enlighten them for a moment. What is so wonderful about not being reflective?

Our mere existence poses the question we all must ask ourselves at some point--why do we exist? The answer for many is that we are God's creation and that we do His will. The certitude of that answer is not for everyone. I look at the question and choose to divert it to understanding how we live. To my mind, how we live, how we behave, what we create are all significant answers to the question. It gives moral significance to all our actions.

The majority of my adult life has been steeped in the understanding of 18th century English furniture. It is a picture to the past for me and reflects the incredible levels of sophistication that were attained in the century known as the Age of Reason. I admire the time period (though I am happy that I am alive today) and look at it as a step to what and where civilization is today. Reflection and introspection allow me to both understand and appreciate this. You can extrapolate this to cover the history of all the arts--they are essential to what we are as a civilization.

I know that "to do" is always better than "to think" about doing. But doing things right the first time requires experience and judgment. These qualifications come with time and being wrong often enough to know what is right. The moral certitude in this world is a luxury that only religion can truly afford and I suggest that religionists enjoy and savor it and keep it to and for themselves. For the rest of us, we have the chance to do something right by learning what is right. It is the lesson that we learn in life.

Halldor Laxness (1902-1998) was an Icelandic novelist who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1955 for "Independent People". When I lost my copy of the novel in the tube in London, I figured my reading gods had said, "enough". After all, the old testament followed the vicissitudes of the Jews and if I needed a reminder of just how tough life could be, I could focus on the Book of Job. Not sufficiently satisfied at a novel half read, I bought another copy and finished it recently. A tough read, but a startling conclusion.

On to "Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle", by Vladimir Nabokov whose life roughly paralleled the time line of Laxness having been born in 1899 and dying at a young 78 in 1977. Try leaving Iceland for the somewhereabouts of Nabokov's incestuous duo, Van and Ada. After the first chapters where the geneology is confusingly made clear, you might find a verbal (and other) conjugality that eludes the firmest of grasps, particularly as it alternates between Russian, French and English. I have a favorite sentence which is all I have as yet from the novel. "Je raffole de tout ce qui rampe." (I am crazy about everything that crawls.) I can't see Vladimir and Halldor exchanging pleasanteries at the bar, somehow.

But reading isn't all. The crisis of the economy deepens and the atrocities in Mumbai undermine our sense of complacency in many ways. For my part, I realize that my life's work is to not only sell but to live with fine things to remind myself what is so wonderful about man. There should be no compromise and I hope my past, present and (hopefully) future clients feel the same way. We have but one life to live and it should be lived in the belief that we are more than what almost any current newspaper says we are.

When I was a student at the London College of Furniture 35 years ago, I was taught a simple maxim about restoration which was to do as little as possible and maintain the integrity of the antique. This philosophy is now known as conservation and it has benefited the antiques trade enormously. The restorers I met when I returned to America had no concept of this and were stripping, sanding, spraying antiques turning them into hybrids of half old, half new pieces. It was a shock to me, because the restoration I had learned was so much simpler in scope.

In reaction to these draconian methods of "restoring" antique furniture, a new coterie of young dealers blossomed whose philosophy was to leave every piece they found in "as found" condition. The philosophy took and was re-emphasized on shows such as "The Antiques Roadshow". It became a mantra that didn't allow for cleaning even in cases where it was obvious where subsequent to original finishes, layers of shellac had been daubed on and since crazed, crackled and alligatored.

There is too much of a good thing. The "as found" condition is, in my opinion, a simplistic way of looking at a piece of furniture. A great cabinetmaker understood craftsmanship, form and timber selection. To allow a piece with a later daubed on finish to be called a part of the history of a piece of furniture is like allowing a broken tooth to remain broken. Timber selection might as soon as be ignored to allow piece to remain so tarnished.

My teachers understood that furniture was functional. If a rail needed splicing or a glue block added some place, it was done. We could scrawl a date on our repair, we could save old rails and glue them to new ones if they had to be replaced and most of all, if we could save a finish, we would through simple cleaning and polishing. After all, it was important for a piece to look good as well as be functional.

Is the American trade doing the right thing or are the English correct in their methods? As an English furniture dealer and former restorer, I know there are boundaries that need respecting. I also feel that the American approach is too draconian, rather like the ex-drunk that fears being around drinkers. It is a safe philosophy but hardly comprehensive of the intention of the furniture. Times change as do fashions and it is possible that neither trade will be right in 20 years. The future will call those shots, not any of us.

We rely on rating agencies to determine value for us in all sorts of way. Moody's and Standards and Poors rate companies on the stock exchange to give us an idea of true value. The accuracy of assessments is certainly important, but that seems to be getting called into question of late with the precipitous decline in the market. Perhaps the rating agencies in the world of antiques should also be called into question?

The rating agencies in the world of antiques are the most recent auction results. Whether dealers like it or not, the public can use these results to assess values. There are two things that I would bring up in this regard, however. The first is that every antique is unique. No two chairs are alike, even if they were made within a day of each other 250 years ago. Averaging out value of ten similar chairs is a way around this, but it is skewed by the second factor which is that demand is never constant. Demand can be disproportionately high or low making it, by definition, inconstant. Both of these factors skew "true" value.

Obviously, dealers have to determine their own "true" value when they put price tags on their items. Their rationale is based on experience and knowledge of trading in the market. Inevitably, a dealer will have a different sense of value than the auction houses who use one shot to sell an item and who, on any given day, can see a huge fluctuation in demand. The truth, of course is that there is no "true" value. There is the dealer who sells the item and his word. It either has value or it doesn't.

I was listening to NPR this morning and Newt Gingrich was being interviewed about what the Republicans were needing to do to get back on track. I like Newt Gingrich. I think he is very, very smart and I think he should have run for president in 2000. He is a thoughtful and creative politician who thinks about the future.

I was surprised therefore to hear him blame the economic deterioration of Michigan on the Democrats. Do I think the politicians in Michigan culpable for their unwavering support of the auto makers? Absolutely. Would the Republicans have done anything differently? I don't think so. I think that the auto makers were the dog and the politicians the tail. How far back we can take this might entail politicians like the Republican George Romney. And did those automakers by any chance also back Republicans?

The idea is that blame can be spread to every corner of this nation. Out of control lobbyists are one aspect of the problem and too susceptible politicians are another. Corruption is a state of mind as much as anything and someone voting, perfectly legally, for something they know is the wrong thing, is as corrupt as the person accepting a bribe.

What does this have to do with English antique furniture? I have bought some wonderful things in Michigan over the years. I also think that Newt should relax just a shade and I have just the chair to sell him in which he could do that. Think about it Newt!

The Detroit automakers are asking for a handout from the Federal government and this has a number of people outraged. (Thomas Friedman wrote an excellent editorial about their obtuseness in the face of the realities of our times.) I happen to agree with the outrage. The questions I have are about the nature of the decisions which were so wrong for so long that put the carmakers in their tenuous financial position in the first place.

Americans are ofter perceived as having an enthusiastic gung-ho type of spirit which people from around the world admire. At the same time, Americans are often pictured, abroad at least, as ill mannered. Neither of these pictures are completely accurate as after all, we are all individuals and we all play our own roles in life. If we don't know whether we are ill-mannered, then we might be and I have to say that I have been gung-ho about very few things.

The automakers seem to have applied both these stereotypes to their decision making. GM has been making SUVs to beat the band and now they are going nowhere. Hybrid cars by Ford have been scrapped because they were deemed not market worthy. And yet Toyota has been selling Prius cars like hotcakes! Our automakers seem to think that if they put enough of their energy in selling an outmoded car that they are doing good business. And now they want $25,000,000,000!Count those zeroes! I think I would be gung-ho about getting that amount of money to reward my stupidity. Where do I sign up?

A woman called me the other day and wanted to sell me some candlesticks that "were just like the ones behind the pope when he was saying mass". I declined the offer claiming protestant roots and the desire to adhere to my mother's anti-Catholic sensibilities. (Her experiences at Convent were traumatic.) Other than that, it has been a while since I have been offered anything for sale. Times may be bad, but they can't be that bad.

Last Saturday I was in Charlottesville, Virginia and saw Jefferson's Rotunda flanked by pavilions and was hugely impressed. I can only imagine the hopes that were attached to that vision, the dream of an educated democratic society and what it might be capable of were almost tangible. I found it all quite moving.

The serpentine walls that surrounded the pavilion houses giving them back gardens also evoked a memory for me. I don't remember seeing any in England on my travels to country houses, but there was a serpentine wall at our neighbor's house in St. Croix. Our neighbor, Bill Emmons, went to UVA for law school and obviously stole the idea. It evoked great memories in me. This is what design is supposed to do.

A Republican friend called and asked if I was gloating over Obama's victory. I said, "no, that isn't what I care about". I have to admit that I like John McCain, but his campaign made some terrible missteps beginning with his choice for VP and continued with some of the Roveian tactics that he used on Obama.

Obama is going to be watched with close scrutiny by his opponents and his errors will be shouted from the rooftops. That should be the case with every president and is something we have given the current occupant a pass on. Presidents are, after all, the final say-so. I feel that their concentration should always be on the fundamentals, basically health, education and infrastructure.

Frankly, politics in the end bores me rigid. When, for example, ten men can see a goal that they want but need to argue over the path to that goal and indeed find themselves at times going the opposite direction to allegedly achieve that goal, I will happily leave them to argue it among themselves. But when Rome is burning, you would think that putting the fire out is of urgent importance. The smoke is getting thicker.