Clinton Howell Antiques

I was half expecting Gaudeamus igitur to be sung at my daughter's graduation from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It wasn't, but the band played, "On Wisconsin!"  probably the most famous fight song ever written. It was, I believe, offered to Michigan who turned it down. Big mistake.

My lone English furniture contact in Madison lit out of town for the weekend, probably to avoid the crush of graduation and general escape of the academic year end. I have never purchased anything from him, but he knows his onions and I was always hoping that the odd piece would turn up just prior to one of my Madison visits. No such luck.

Speaking of onions, one of the great satirical newspapers, "The Onion" was started by two Wisconsin undergraduates in the 1980's and is available everywhere in Madison. It is funny though I regret to say aimed at a slightly younger demographic than I fit into these days. Nevertheless, it is a testament to a student body that is quite extraordinary. On Wisconsin!

There is so much in the world to write about and yet I have been unable to put together my thoughts for several weeks. The reason is balance, of course. The antiques business is, at times, exceedingly busy with travel and getting to places, but there are troubles of all sorts from breakage to audits from governemnt agencies to jury duty and the balance seems quite out of kilter.

What I would like most of all is to have things run properly. What a concept! Do something and get a result. Seems like it should work, but human beings are not inert chemicals and bureaucracies are even more byzantine. There are no straight lines in human endeavors.

The English furniture business, however, is alive and well as all sorts of people have been coming in despite the chaos that my normal life provides. Perhaps redemption, or at least a buffer to the chaos, comes in the form of being busy. I don't know yet so I will have to get back to you.

For my English, English furniture colleagues, I would like to offer a few travel tips should they want to visit some of the more far flung auction houses in places like Hibbing, Minnesota, Fargo, North Dakota, Laurel, Mississippi, Anchorage, Alaska, Salem, Oregon, etc.

1. The weather will be violent--dress accordingly and bring a rubber duckie.
2. The people will be friendly except the violent ones--dress accordingly and pack heat.
3. Try the food, but not too much. Bring antacids.
4. The dollar is useless so bring yuan.
5. Don't pack a bag because it will be lost and probably stolen.
6. Taxi drivers don't know where they are going and probably don't speak English.
7. Florida is not Disneyland.
8. California is not Disneyland.
9. Dubai is Disneyland but it is not in America.
10. English is spoken in America. Bring a Spanish dictionary.
11. Watch out for bears, wolves, coyotes, snakes, scorpions and tarantulas. They can all kill you. Pack heat.
12. Don't pretend you are on vacation when you bump into another dealer.
13. If you get to know a local, emphasize your accent, particularly if you are wearing a tie. He might like foreigners and forgive the tie.
14. Don't wear a tie.
15. Don't wear a suit.
16. Forget the hot tea, drink Snapple.
17. We drive on the right, but it doesn't necessarily mean we drive on the right.
18. Don't order wine outside major cities. If you do, refer to #3.
19. American women love English accents. Their husbands and boyfriends might not. Pack heat.
20. Remember that the goods always look better "undiscovered" in America. Stay home, they will get to you eventually and you won't have to heed the previsous 19 suggestions.

The first book that I read by Kurt Vonnegut was "God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater" which my mother gave to me in 1965. It was clear in that book and all of his subsequent novels that Vonnegut did not trust collective wisdom. It was perhaps most clear in "Slaughterhouse Five" where Vonnegut writes of the fire bombing of Dresden.

Collective wisdom, more often than not, lacks responsibility. With a few shining exceptions such as the Declaration of Independence, collective wisdom more often than not seeks the lowest common denominator of acceptance. Hence such decisions as dumping PCBs in the Hudson, for example. The world of English antique furniture is far removed from such egregious behavioral miscues, but I remember that the reason I got into the business was for the romance, the history, the aesthetics of what I was handling. There are others like me and we all have to acknowledge that the business is for earning our living. But money is much more the focus today. For me the romance always comes first.

Vonnegut used science fiction to step out of the reality of collective wisdom gone awry. There is no such refuge for society today as we reel towards a warmer and warmer planet based on the "needs" a nation has for development. Literature, and I may have been reading too much Joseph Conrad and not enough Kurt Vonnegut, seems to emphasize the inevitability of the nature of man. It is not a pretty picture.

The sheer muscularity of Joseph Conrad's prose, his ability to transpose opposites to create taut and descriptive sentences is, quite frankly, awesome. His description of a woman's love is startling. "....for it is only women who manage to put at times into their love an element just palpable enough to give one fright--an extra terrestrial touch." (Lord Jim, Penguin Classics, 2000, p.247)

There is an honesty and a clear sightedness in Conrad's prose that is all too lacking in our world of spin and PR. We believe things not because they are, but because we keep getting told that they are. It doesn't matter what inour lives I am talking about here be it English furniture, politics or science. What is great is great, what is not so great is just that. Do we need to be in Iraq? Does global warming need to be scientifically proven? "Scientifically proven" was the mantra of 1950's TV advertisers who used the phrase for, among other things, hawking cigarettes. Who would think that it would be used to defeat the initiative to reduce carbon dioxide emissions?

It is not just Conrad's prose that is so deep. His stories involve the corruption of the self. The characters, Kurtz in "The Heart of Darkness", Nostromo in that eponymous titled novel and Jim of "Lord Jim" understand the depth of their moral compromise and for the three of them it leads to their premature death. The apparent redemption of Jim is all the more poignant in Jim's inability to escape his fate. The words touch the self in us and remind us what is real. We need that, scientifically proven or not.

The NY Times, my primary source of entertainment and enlightenment, came through again today. The Science Section was all about sexual desire. A hot topic, no doubt, although the articles were far less prurient than might be imagined. It is, after all, the Science Section although I have to admit to liking the candor of the 50ish psychologist who was turned on by listening to Noam Chomsky.

Sexual desire is certainly the most obvious of human wants and it is most likely the source of a great deal of our behavior, but where does the rest of a human being come from? Where on earth does honesty come from, or courage or a whole list of attributes that cover the gamut of character? And evil, what is it and where did it arise? Assuming that you can even define it?

This may not have much to do with English antique furniture, but it is nice not to think about antiques from time to time. I suppose I could relate my passion for antiques as being some sort of sexual manifestation of self but such psychology doesn't really go far enough. It may link the why, but it doesn't explain the commitment.

A friend called and suggested that my last blog was offensive to the buyer of the pair of consoles that sold for $637,200. Antiques can be looked at objectively and that is what I was doing in my blog. I further suggested that my two pairs of consoles are better than those two. I still do.

I use my blog competitively. When pieces at auction make huge prices, more than the article might cost in a shop somewhere, I make note of it.  This is one of those instances. I think the buyer could have done better coming to my shop.

I would give my eye teeth to be able to see a piece of English antique furniture through the eyes of someone else. Our personal sense of aesthetics notwithstanding, I have to say that there is among the top dealers a certain uniformity of taste and judgment. However, as I contemplate the pair of consoles that sold in St. Louis last week for $637,200, I realize that there are greater differences than I thought.

It is ever the eye of the beholder that decides what is right in the world of aesthetics. And there are  many documented cases of maligned artists who have gone on to be considered among the world's greatest. However, art is art and furniture, while artistic, has specific aspects that are to be judged for quality, condition, composition and form.

I just don't get what is so great about this pair of tables. Condition-wise, the legs have patches of veneer at the top of the legs on the back side. This could have been original, but is highly unusual of circa 1785 cabinetmaking. Several of the legs have screws in them, probably because they have been broken. There is a crack in the veneer of one top. The middle layer of veneer also looks to be boxwood, a most unusual choice for that time period. (It may in fact be satinwood.) The trophies of the frieze are cramped butting on the banding, again, an unusual and particularly ungraceful presentation. What is good  is the overall color of the tables and the engraving is quite fine.  Overall, I think the tables might rate an A- and that perhaps they are made a little after 1785.

I would like to see them through the buyer's eyes and see whether he sees what I see. Either he does and he discounts the limitations due to the overall paucity of top grade material on the market or he just sees good tables. If it is the former, then I would question these tables of being worthy of such a huge price and if it is the latter then I wholeheartedly disagree with him.

Every once in a while, you hit upon a simile or metaphor that really strikes a chord. While reading Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim" the other day, I came across a real dandy. "The young moon newly recurved, and shining low in the west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold.....," I could see it quite easily.

I am a fan of words but I am also a fan of antiques. The pair of console tables that sold for over $600,000 in St. Louis last week, which I went to see, did not capture my imagination. They did not have it for me--what I would call that extra dimension of greatness. When I said that they were not as good as either of the two pairs I own, I was not being boastful.

If I had to describe those tables with a simile, I would say that they were like a thoroughbred whose lineage was about speed but which just didn't measure up. That doesn't really matter, however, as long as someone sees some speed in them.

Is the English antique furniture world facing a decline? In the last five to six weeks, we have seen a serpentine chest sell in auction for over $100,000, a pair of cabinets for over $300,000, a serving table for over $200,000, a sofa table for over $200,000 and a pair of demi-lune inlaid consoles for over $600,000.

I don't care about high prices. I like good furniture and I have some great English furniture. In fact, I have not one but two pairs of demi-lune consoles that are better than the pair that sold for $600,000, a lot better in fact.

The market may not be what it was, but that is because supply has diminished and fewer people will be able to use English furniture for decoration, particularly with the prices I cite above. Great English furniture can be found in shopslike mine--you needn't wait for it to appear in auction. And, surprisingly, it isn't all that brown.

A friend suggested to me that there are no coincidences. That may be so, but what about serendipity?

I have been looking for an old friend of mine, someone I haven't seen in at least ten years. Another friend wanted to hire him so I said that I would find him. I have tried everything and because he lives in Europe, it has been quite difficult to track him even with the Internet. I had pretty much given up hope that I would find him.

Changing planes in Chicago, he was seated about six feet from the ticket counter.

I like museums and I like it that the New York Times has a "Museum" section to read. The issues are almost always the same, however, and include the repatriation of stolen art works, the museum branches concept that was pioneered by the Guggenhime and how museums are going to raise the money to continue being what they are.

My problem with them is that I am not sure what they are. The Victoria and Albert in London made great strides in my opinion when they created an interactive system for viewing their furniture collection. To me, that was a great step forward. But I look at the Met in New York and wonder why they bother having the English furniture they have on display. It doesn't really offer much to the museum goer.

In a way, I would like to see museums forced to use their collections far more than they do. Perhaps there should be a mandate that everything that is not on display should either be sold or loaned to another institution until the time the owner museum decides to put it on display. I also think that the displays themselves should be re-thought in the fashion that the V&A re-thought their display. Someone might even come up with a better idea.

It would be nice to think that there is a spiritual dimension to great art, something that taps into the self in a way that makes us believe that it was more than man doing the creating, that perhaps there was some form of universal being that inhabited the artist long enough to paint or sculpt what moves us. In the world of art, we can bemoved and we can interpret in such a fashion, but I believe that the spiritual dimension is in the eye of the beholder and not in the hands of the artist. What moves us is what we choose to see.

Put in a different fashion, there are marvels almost everywhere you look. Last night while walking up Third Ave., the wind whipped a piece of paper off the ground, it came towards my head, stopped over my left shoulder and held for a second before it whipped skyward. The paper seemed as if it were alive. The interpretation could have been spiritual, but it wasn't. It was unusual, amusing and just a tad awe inspiring, but it was in the end, just the wind.

Great things are great no matter who is looking at them. Is it technical ability or are there immutable laws that make certain permutations and combinations of line and color to be just right no matter who puts them together? I believe that greatness is achieved by people who spend their lives working at it. There is no lock on greatness. You must practice at it.

I could wish that man had a supernatural ability to transcend human-ness in some form or another and that some supernatural being could inhabit us, albeit temporarily. All sorts of questions would have answers and we could attribute divinity to where it is due. But that is the point. We don't know what divinity is but we are awed by greatness and we want to equate them. That isn't so bad, but it isn't the whole story.

The time has come to believe in contemporary art. The revelation came to me while thinking about English furniture and the quantity of history it carries with it. I don't think this country, as a whole not individually, likes history. We always want something new and, while it gets us into trouble from time to time, it separates us from countries that can't seem to escape history.

Contemporary art has no history at all. It really doesn't reflect any continuum in the art world and it is exciting. Some of it is great and some of it is so bad that you can't imagine why it is shown. No matter, because it is a plethora of stuff and the sheer quantity of it makes the good things better and the bad things grist for the mill. Ideas, the foundation of America after all, are almost better when they are half formed, at least in the art world, because of the world of possibility they open up.

The mainstreaming continues as the Getty Art Museum in Los Angeles is set to show the contemporary art of Tim Hawkinson. (I would call his art cool in the way that R. Crumb and Hieronymous Bosch's's art is cool.) I have to say that, along with the Getty and Christie's and all the other institutions that are climbing on to the contemporary art band wagon, that I am ready to believe. (I know I have said this before but it is the reaffirmation that is important.) Just allow me to integrate it with a little history in the form of English antique furniture. There is a place for it as well.

The front page of the NY Times on Saturday, March 3rd surprised me with an article about a collector  of contemporary art. It surprised me because of what I am seeing as the "mainstreaming" of contemporary art. What used to be a vaguely eccentric and hip past time for an elite has become an industry that draws a wide and divergent and rich audience.

This ties in very well with Christie's purchase of the gallery, Haunch of Venison. Christie's, while not averse to the cutting edge aspect of contemporary art, sees contemporary art as the passport to a vast new spectrum of clients. There is absolutely no reason for not thinking that someone collecting contemporary art today might not be collecting old masters tomorrow as well as wanting a diamond, an estate in Mexico or wine all supplied by Christie's. The fear that any established business is that they will be forgotten by the next generation and by buying Haunch of Venison, Christie's has staked their ground as a hip and happening place.

But contemporary art is the scene at the moment. And the scene is rarefied and rich. To get a piece by a hot artist, you have to be on a call list of a gallery. What???? Is this a bubble, perhaps, a bonanza, the wave of the future or a passing fancy? Too many questions there, but you get the idea. All I know is that I would not mind seeing a front page article in the Times on English furniture.