How was January for you?

It is always the case that January carries with it a contradictory air of both optimism and depression. There is no particular reason to get too obsessed by the end of the year. It is an end but at the same time nothing actually finishes - not really. It is just like Monday, just on a bigger scale. But having made it to the end of the year it is with a big sigh of relief that we recognise and acknowledge that nothing too awful has happened to us and we can still stand up and carry on. I know that does not sound very positive but in the world as we experience right now that is pretty good. 2016 was not a splendid year. As an antique dealer deeply embedded in European art and design I was very depressed by the Brexit vote; less so by the wave of celebrity deaths - though some did make me sad; the American election seemed to be expressive of global lack of good fellowship. To end up at Christmas after all this injury - an insult was added in that I got a beastly cold. I coughed and wheezed and blew my nose so often that the bedroom became bedecked with tissues like a cheap Christmas grotto, my nose would have given Rudolph a run for his money. 

I did five fairs during the year, three in the tent at Battersea and two at Olympia. They passed with a curate's egg-like scale of success. There were no great troughs and as few heights. I am probably bound to do the same again this year. The collapse of the pound does have a positive in that UK art and antiques are now significantly cheaper than they were in June. Each time I set out my stall I was filled with anticipatory optimism leading to partial disappointment followed by modest success. During the year I presented myself directly to people via calls and emails and I sent out a number of modestly entertaining email newsletters. I roll out ideas and images on Instagram and Twitter. All of this adds up to a standard issue antique dealer. I am not a trend setter, I cannot shift the world on or off its axis, I have to follow the vicissitudes that politicians, the economy and my own life throw at me. So when Christmas comes the carousel stops for a pause and an extended feast.

But now in 2017 we have headed off on the epic journey that will end at Christmas again. January brings the first Battersea Decorative fair of the year. Half deja-vu half hopeless optimism. The pad of yellow paper that sits on my desk was set to work arranging furniture on a two dimension plane. At Hatfields, the restorer, my things were buffed and made ready to go. Orlando, Patrick and their team at Oak fine art movers gathered up and deposited. I put everything in place and yet again a rather tiresome five days followed and I ended up doing just enough business to justify coming back. Not really a sensible way to earn a living but it is the only route I feel inclined to take. There is at the fair a real buzz which comes from the fact that the crowds still come, the appetite to buy is palpably there. There is a surprisingly robust and vigorous market - despite everything.

I decided as a new leaf for a new year to sign up to the LAPADA website. It took quite a few days to load around 130 items onto the site and it was quite exciting feeling that a new venture was underway. I like LAPADA, it is down-to-earth and hard-working as an organisation and it is definitely trying to be useful. It is the organisation for the lower end of the market, but in these days of austerity it is no bad thing to be associated with the 'value' end of the market. More than anything it is stimulating to start a new thing.

On the other side of things I have discovered the joy of the chainsaw. It began a year ago with the purchase of a cheap Chinese one in the supermarket in France. It is amazing what you can buy these days in a supermarket. It was very heavy and I kept blunting the chain so this year as a tree has fallen in the field by our Somerset dwelling I decided to invest in a Stihl one. This is one of those very manly brands that professionals use and it is reassuringly expensive. As a neophyte lumber jack I thought it appropriate to acquire a macho chainsaw. The noise and danger of the chainsaw is very invigorating. I have never owned a fast car that roars and now I don't need to. The pure delight of knowing that with a slip of the hand or concentration I could sever a limb or merely do myself a mortal injury is adrenalin inducing enough.  The tree is nearly gone and I have not lost my passion for this lethally efficient tool.

With Brexit starting, Donald Trump being Donald Trump and the possibility of crypto fascists - Populists - being elected across Europe who knows where this year will lead us but as we head into February again let us all cross our fingers and our toes and hope that armageddon will not ensue and we can enjoy Christmas at the end of this journey.

Life in the Arts Lane - week 130 - Prepping and Packing

The tension starts to rise a week or so before any fair. No matter how often I exhibit I never can be completely blithe about the process. Back in my Mallett days there were people buzzing around making preparations but now it is all down to me. It begins with a piece of paper and a ruler. I measure out my stand and start imagining the 'mise en scene'; this takes a while, with quite some crossing out and redrawing, but from this skeleton all else follows. The plotting triggers everything including the nervous anticipation of both problems and triumphs. There is always the dream that someone will come on to the stand and buy everything, a fantasy balanced by a nightmare where everything is unsold, damaged and derided. Neither has yet come to pass. 

The dark art of planning a stand.

My current focus is the Olympia Art and Antiques fair which opens ominously on the night of Halloween. I am not going to wear a comedic spooky outfit nor will I bedeck my stand with cobwebs and pumpkins - when most people see my modest prices they are scared enough. There are countless UK and international fairs from September through to December - the Autumn season is packed but as a rough guide the season starts with the Biennnale in Paris and ends with Winter Olympia. This fair strives to mop up the last of the year's buyers before they run off and hunker down to celebrate Christmas. It offers for the most part items of modest value and whilst there is a larding of six-figure pieces - even the occasional seven-figure - the majority will be four and five.  That does not mean the stuff is only decorative, it just means that it is modest. The quirky and the imaginative is what is on offer and that can be excellent and exquisite in execution. 

The fair comes at a difficult time in London because Brexit has triggered a large drop in the value of sterling, and whilst the devaluation creates an opportunity for buyers - providing what appears to be an inbuilt discount - it increases people's sense of nervousness and insecurity. That mood is as discouraging as the reduced price of the items is tempting. In addition many of the buyers at UK Fairs are Europeans and Americans who have moved here for work and their future status is now uncertain. This dissuades them from furnishing in an indulgent way. So within this brittle market Woodham-Smith Ltd and confreres are trying to make a show which will both be commercial and entertaining. To this end we focus on the classic methodologies. We gather fresh things, we show practical pieces with an edge of originality and glamour and we keep our prices down. Invitations will be sent out and good clients personally encouraged to attend. It is a lottery to which we all buy far too many tickets in the hope that one might come good.

Will they be ready on time?

I am getting ready. I have my plan but now I must make a really hard decision. Do I take my wine fridge or not? It is a great boon and comfort to have chilled white wine ready at all times but it is possibly a distraction to spend more time plotting my evening libation than focussing on the customers. Also the fridge itself is no enhancement to the beauty of the stand. Though I am pleased with my 70s revival glasses. It will probably go. 

I walked today through Battersea Park with my friend Arthur Millner, an expert in Indian and Islamic art. He is not an exhibitor but he is giving a lecture at the fair. He was fretting too, he is worried that he has not done enough work in preparation and consequently he is going the shut himself away for the next week to get ready. Nearly all fairs have a lecture programme and an exhibition to enhance the visitors experience. I am uncertain how much potential buyers want to attend lectures but it does make the fair more rounded and organisers want to encourage visitors not just buyers. Although I know his lecture will be excellent, Arthur's nervousness is infectious and back at home I spend a careful afternoon checking up on my preparations. 

At Hatfields, the restorers, they are completing the finishing touches to the items coming to the fair. Richard, the foreman and manager tries not to let his face fall as I bowl in on an almost daily basis asking for the impossible. They say a watched pot never boils and that seems to apply to restoration: if you hang over the shoulder of a craftsman they rebel and down tools - you have to encourage and cajole them like getting a timid cat to come out from under a cupboard. 

In addition, upholsterers and polishers should not consider going away on holiday for a fortnight before a fair - certainly they should not be allowed to. I ring my shippers for the umpteenth time encouraging them urgently to deliver my foreign purchases in time to get them ready. As the fair approaches so does the sense that everything needs to be done at once, preferably yesterday. I can comfort myself with the feeling that I am not alone, similar calls are being made by dealers throughout the land. 

Then comes the computer and the printer wrestling match. Like many dealers I print my descriptions onto sticky labels and then fix those onto string labels. The devils who design the software for label printing at Avery must chortle with delight knowing the exquisite torture they put us through. The box provided for the words never quite lines up with the label that comes out of the printer. It all ends up being a pile of errors dumped into the paper recycling and yours truly ragged and wretched accepting imperfection and scribbling hand-written corrections onto the labels in an unforgivably scruffy way. It is a battle I fight and lose before every fair. 

Nearly ready.

The penultimate battle is the one fought getting the treasures onto the stand and looking good. The carriers arrive and with a requisite amount of complaint and groaning the van is loaded up. The traffic stiffens and, cursing the delays, they arrive to do battle with the fair organisers security. Unlike prison guards who want to keep their inmates in, their struggle is to keep everyone out. If you get your goods to your stand without weeping or cursing their day is clouded. What follows is a sweaty few hours battling with wobbly walls and equally wobbly ladders. Screws fall out, nails bend, pictures hang skew whiff and the furniture tips in unseemly ways due to the uneven floor. In the end it all looks as good as it can and you head home in order to prepare emotionally for the descent of the fair's vetting team next day.

Like blood hounds following a scent the vetters sniff round the fair in pursuit of errors. They rootle about seeking imperfection and deception and debate how best to correct it. Will a change of wording do the trick or does the offending item have to be ejected from the fair?  It is a necessary pain, as mistakes can be made and it is best to do what you can to protect the unwitting public. 

And then it's done. You dust, wipe and move an object slightly to the left. The rest is up to the random delighted guest who falls so in love with an object that they have to take it home. Roll on the 31st October.