Clinton Howell Antiques

Does creativity dim with aging? Mathematicians freely admit that they do not have the same creative insight past the age of thirty that they do in their youth. Artists seldom get better although Rembrandt certainly kept on being great. I think craftsmen improve with age in a thousand different ways, many of them not at all obvious to the casual observer. Watch an old stone wall maker and watch a young one. There is a difference and the older man is not at a disadvantage for his age.

The most comforting aspect of the decorative arts is the devotion to function and beauty. Flights of fancy that are impractical weed themselves out. Indeed, the pieces are clearly objective and although you can be subjective about, for example, the quality of carving on a piece (it requires connoisseurship to make this kind of judgment) anyone can determine functionality.

Creativity is ultimately difficult to define. The demands that we have on ourselves to make a living require us to plow a field and if we know what is good for us, we tend to plow the field that yields a predictable profit. What greater stifling is there to the creative mind than that? The dynamic, a distinctly human one, is of mediocrity.

Christie's has raised their commission rate on purchases up to ten thousand pounds to twenty-five percent. I think you could rant and rave about this, but I don't think it worth the fervor. As a dealer, it is important to know your market and know how much you can spend on something and stop when the item gets too expensive. It is a straightforward equation.

The antiques business used to rely heavily on the major auction houses to supply them with goods. It doesn't as much as it used to for several reasons, the foremost being an overall shortage of supply of antique furniture. There are four major sales of English furniture in New York these days and usually only two of them are worthwhile. This has to be affecting the thinking of the auction houses and the value of staying in the antique furniture market altogether.

I have to admit to feeling just a little sorry for the auction houses. They are making moves towards getting into the contemporary art market, a more fickle market there isn't. Where do you go if your sources are drying up? Perhaps ready-to-move-in-to homes with the art and decorative art of your choice. The auction houses could sell the lock, stock and barrel. How much is that worth?

I was told once by an antique dealer that the more unusual and rare an item was, the more you should suspect whether it was an antique or an inspired reproduction. I would like to think that there are some rules in the antique furniture business, but there aren't. This rule, like all the others, is a rule of thumb., something to go by when you are in a pinch and is certainly not an absolute.

What is true in the antiques business is that if you come upon something extremely unusual, it is likely to have a great many detractors among your competitors. There is a herd mentality in the business, probably in all businesses for that matter, that finds it difficult to accept the unique. Unique objects were, of course, made, just as pieces have been altered and re-made. The antiques world has a very hard time with these pieces.

The concept of unique is unsettling. It throws the rule of thumb out of whack. I'll never forget coming upon a cove on Lake Cayuga that had many thousands of geese resting in it. They were all facing the same way and you could sense that the safety of the species depended on their massing together. But our instincts to amass ourselves in thought and deed can't always be right. Otherwise there wouldn't be hermits.

In an article in the NY Times Magazine several weeks ago, Michael Ignatieff wrote of President Bush as having led a "charmed life" and ergo his decision making was thereby suspect. This logic is suspect and the statement nothing more than a gratuitous swipe at a class, which may be fair game, but which is not really the point. Attacking someone for being wrong is one thing, but the attribution for error is another thing altogether.

I have tried to apply the concept of what a charmed life would be in the antiques trade. The only thing I can think is tha multi-generational firms are charmed for lasting so long. Even then, however, each new generation has to build their own business so the charm only lasts so long. The word charmed is clearly inappropriate here as it was in the context of Ignatieff's article.

The word Ignatieff was seeking, or one that I believe is a-propos, is hubris. Bush's hubris is his hammartia or as was written in Proverbs, pride goeth before the fall. George Bush has done many things wrong in my opinion, but they are not the fault of where he came from. The American people wanted a president whose greatest conviction is his own rightness, something that could be said about a great many Americans from all walks of life.

Those who like to say to-mah-to
Enjoy the tone, the deep vibrato.
Those who say it is to-may-to,
Know their god, know who to pray to.
To them, to-mah is pseudo-classy,
To-may, however, is just too brassy.
There is proof alas, that one is right,
It comes just after one sweet bite.
The syllable that escapes the lips,
Slips and slides and slides and slips,
It is contentment, what one says aaah! to
That makes the long "a" obligato.

Does it ever make you wonder how politicians can continue to reiterate a falsity in order to substantiate the claim of veracity? Our president has done this in saying that Al Qaeda necessitated his invasion of Iraq. No matter what else you say, this is a falsity and it is no truer no matter how many times he says it. Debate the value of the war, perhaps, but don't debate this fact.

I call this blindspeak. The repetitive declamation, true or false, definitely has power, particularly when you are in the position of having news people covering your every utterance. It doesn't work when it is your mother that you are trying to blindspeak when she has caught you with your hand in the cookie jar.

In the antique world, blindspeak is the salesman who will say what the client wants to hear even when it includes bald faced lies. Fortunately, this type of salesman is on the wane if only because the English furniture business attracts fewer charlatans these days. I just hope our president doesn't go into the antiques business when he is done as president. He might give the business a bad name.

An article in today's NY Times noted the passing of Norma Gabler, woman who with her husband Mel, virtually controlled the content of a great many text books in the American school system. Their close atttention to detail allowed them to severrely criticize not only details that were incorrect but overly "liberal" concepts espoused in the textbooks of the American classroom. I am sure George Bush owes the Gablers a debt of gratitude.

Input becomes our understanding without doubt. I can sympathize with the Gablers sense of outrage that there is a longer paragraph on Marilyn Monroe than George Washington in a history textbook, but I also have to stand up for cultural history. Marilyn Monroe may not have been an important personage on the stage of 20th century history but she helped personify an era. Not knowing who she is will not affect your understanding of the cold war, but you will certainly not understand America in the 1950's and 60's if you don't know Marilyn.  Extrapolate this to  furniture and you will understand my passion for English antique furniture and, by extent, English history.

Power is an interesting phenomenon. First you have to grab it and then you have to hold on to it. Rather like Oscar Wilde's observation about golf being a terrible way to ruin a good walk, power is a terrible way to ruin a good life. I suspect my viewpoint might be lost on the Gablers, but then I don't regret that at all.

Since I finished Joseph Conrad's, "Victory", which I would describe as exquisitely written, I have yet to come across another book that has grabbed me with such intensity. In this case, as is true in all of the Conrad novels I have read, it is sentence structure and language that drive the book. Conrad's novels rely on the convention of fate to take its tragic course so there is little suspense to the plot, but that hardly matters as we get to know the characters in ways that are almost unimaginable. In "Victory", the character of  Mr. Jones presages Hannibal Lecter, only with a far greater depth than even Anthony Hopkins could imbue. Evil has seldom been so languidly terrifying.

Antique dealers that truly have an eye are rarer than one might imagine. One dealer that I visit from time to time, not an immensely wealthy dealer at that, always kindles my interest. Shape, texture, form are the subtext to the rules of condition, color, craftsmanship, timber and provenance and the dealer that sees all of it is what I consider a great dealer. They are almost as rare to find as an author like Joseph Conrad.

I was told by a technophile that my take on the iPhone was incorrect. What I was witnessing, according to him, was an entirely novel concept. I am sure that he is right, but I stand by my assertion that the iPhone will be forgotten ere long.

Substance is usually remembered. I qualify that statement just because we can't possibly know all that has been. What we do know are artists and ideas who have been ignored. Van Gogh is the greatest example, but there are many more. Marketing, on the other hand, has made some products and fizzled with others. I think that quality eventually comes out with time no matter how many bill boards someone hires.

The question is how does one recognize substance? How do we separate substance from marketing? It isn't easy. A rule of thumb might be that the more marketing is part of the process of convincing you of substance, the less substance there might be.

I was reading an article about the iPhone from Apple that is making its official debut today, the writer suggesting that the many thousands of articles already written about the phone might constitute overkill. Another new telephone with which we can solve all our problems and we should just ignore it?

One might think of the antiques business as musty and old fashioned particularly in contrast to the technology market. But it isn't. Not by a long shot as 18th century furniture remains the gold standard by which any other period or style is measured. It is a proven quantity that through economic vagaries holds its own, the fickleness of fashion notwithstanding.

The iPhone will be forgotten very soon. Proudly shown off by technophiles today, it will be trashed in favor of newer, faster and more capable models as soon as they hit the market. And all those articles, thousands upon thousands, that were written in anticipation of this, dare I say it, fleeting moment. I think I need to ponder the situation lying down on my Adam designed, neo-classical 18th century gilded settee. After all, comfort is desireable and beauty is sublime.

The Prince of Wales, it was announced this morning, purchased the contents of Dumfries House which was intended for sale at Christie's on July 12-13. The house contained unique Adam/Chippendale rococo designs dating prior to Adam's departure to Rome where he became a confirmed neo-classicist.

Is this a blow to the English furniture business? The publicity would have been nice and I am certain that the lateral thinkers, the pessimsts, the optimists, the outside the boxers will all have a different spin on this. I always like to see new things come on the market because it enlarges the pool of furniture that I can deal in.

Good for the Prince of Wales who deserves a great deal more credit than he usually gets. I wish, however, that he would stick to being an architectural critic and get more of those ghastly concrete structures demolished such as the barracks for the Royal Horse Guards. That is something I could cheer wholeheartedly.

At times, it seems as if being a physicist must be the coolest job in the world. An editorial in the NY Times today waxed eloquently on the solstice, which is tomorrow and is also the day of the most fleeting shadows of the year. Extrapolating therefrom, the writer, Margaret Wertheim who is currently writing a book on physics and the imagination, demonstrates how shadows can actually exceed the speed of light, the fastest physical phenomenon known to man. The only problem is that shadows have no substance.

In the antiques trade, there are two distinctly different sides to the business. There is the buying side and the there is the selling side. The two sides are self explanatory, but what is clear is that very few people embody both sides of the business. As a buyer and a not particularly good seller, I would say that the selling side has little to no substance. I am wrong to say that, however, as all the selling side needs is integrity and it has plenty of substance. The Latin adage, caveat emptor, was coined for a reason, however. I would pay heed to it still, just in case you are dealing with the shadow and not the substance.

Edward Rothstein wrote a magnificent article in yesterday's NY Times ("Connections" p. E3) linking the late philosophers Claude Levi-Strauss and Richard Rorty. Levi-Strauss wrote about the society of the Caduveo, A Brazilian tribe that believed in their superiority to all others, in the 1950's. This society, according to Rothstein, embodies the antithesis to Rorty's belief in a liberal and democratic state, a society that is not dependent and does not recognize a higher authority.

One might say that the antiques and arts business has their Caduveans.

The Caduveos did not believe in giving birth and kidnapped children to continue their line. I am reminded of both the Shakers and the Mamaluks, both of whom followed a mission, almost blindly as the raison d'etre of their lives.

The democratic system is flawed, no doubt about it. I don't think I would want to be a Mamaluk, a Shaker or a Caduveo. Hauteur has always represented insecurity to me. Better to wonder what your mission is than to live without reflection.

The summer English fair season is upon us. First there is Olympia this Thursday and then there is the Grosvenor House Fair which opens a week from Wednesday. I am not really looking forward to either fair which, I have to admit, is perhaps the first time I have felt this way. If the prospect of seeing my son, who has recently transferred to London, was not in the cards, I would probably cancel my trip. It isn't that I don't like London, it is just that fair frenzy is not what it used to be.

Olympia, which used to be a grand market of dealers of all levels from all over Great Britain, has decided to move up market. Fair enough, but it means that a great many of those little dealers have not made the cut. Furthermore, there is so much buying by the dealers that are in the show and there is so little quality English furniture available, all of the things that might interest me will have sold and either be put away or doubled in price. Grosvenor House Fair is just plain too rich for my blood.

I suppose the only thing I can really count on is learning more about the market and what great things are selling for. That is pyrrhic knowledge in that knowing what a London dealer can charge has nothing to do with what I can get for a similar or better item in New York. There are some buyers who just will not buy English furniture in New York even though a vast majority of the goods on show  will probably have recently been in America. These buyers, I guess, believe that we don't speak English furniture well enough.

Is it possible that English furniture is making a comeback in the world of fashion? Did it really go out of fashion? The two questions are of great interest to me for obvious reasons. The second question is more important, however. Because fashion, like Iraq's WMD's, is insubstantial and often imaginary, it is all to the better when the hullabaloo created by the press and auction houses subsides and people can think about what they want to live with, not with what some magazine says is hot.

Every English furniture dealer thinks that their inventory is the greatest and that is how it should be no matter what anyone else says. I certainly think mine is and yet it can always get better. Are their better inventories out there? It is the wrong question. What a buyer should focus on is understanding what they are buying and have some form of personal, intellectual or emotional, attachment to what they buy. Hotel lobbies are allowed, even strive to, be impersonal. Homes should not be.

Ultimately, decoarting is not about catching any old wave, it is about catching THE wave and feeling comfortable once the ride has begun. It takes confidence to know what you want, particularly when it is anything but cheap. People are showing that confidence now. I hope that there are a lot more surfers coming down the pipe line.