Week - 73 - Work Work Work

Knuckling down is a great phrase which simultaneously calls to mind the twin thoughts of hard work and orangutans. After the Easter break there was a general sense that London remained a bit quiet, empty even. Many people were taking advantage of the bank holiday to grab a few extra days' rest. Not in our office. Knuckling down is what we were doing. We gathered in the meeting room at Masterpiece the day after the bank holiday and two hours later we were still there talking.

There is so much to do! Each member of the team is beyond fully-stretched; listing it all is too ghastly to contemplate. Suffice to say that from now until the end of the fair everyone will be working late; no task, from the trivial to the profound, can now be postponed. Despite the workload, energy levels are amazingly high. There is the sense that the event ahead is building its own momentum and we are merely facilitating its relentless onward path; we can steer it, guide it, and attempt to control it, but it is pulling on its leash and is eager and enthusiastic to perform.

On Wednesday I moved house too. To stoke my spirits in preparation for this I decided to try a restaurant called Cigala in Lambs Conduit St - I had a hideous meeting to attend in the afternoon and realised it was round the corner from this Spanish eatery. It has been there for some time and I have always wanted to try it but thus far the occasion had not presented itself. At last the moment had come. The restaurant interior is admirably simple with white and off white as the dominant tones. The menu is simple too with a short list of options and three types of paella. We chose the mixed seafood option and drank a half bottle of Manzanilla sherry with it. As I ladled spoonful after spoonful of this colourful and multi-textured confection onto my plate, the delicate, dry, thin, and scented wine worked its magic, rendering the joint stresses of moving and the legal meeting ahead, a softer-edged nightmarish prospect. Even without concomitant evils, I would strongly recommend Cigala for comfort food of exceptional freshness and deliciousness.

Outside the legal offices attended post-paella, lay one of London's most charming coalhole covers. As a city previously powered and warmed by coal, the streets are punctuated with these discs of martial-seeming low relief decoration in cast iron. In addition, all the utilities have their own individual access points which have changed in shape, ornament and material over the last century or so. Wandering home, I discovered that the same model is right outside the door of my new flat. It felt meaningful in some way, a curious coincidence. These tiny essays in the art of cast iron are becoming a bit of an obsession. For example I adore the fact that many of the ones in NY are proud to say on the borders 'Made in India'. A global trade in manhole covers? Who would have guessed. In Budapest they keep them brassy; throughout France they seem mostly to be made by Pont du Musson, who both sign and add their logo of a medieval looking bridge. Endearingly they are inscribed sometimes with their intended location too; 'trottoir' and 'parking' to name but two. Back in London - in Spitalfields - a local artist Keith Bowler has metamorphosed them from a utilitarian form with accidental beauty into works specifically designed as art. Look them up on the internet or visit them, they make for a delightful walk. These days I walk along any given street examining and comparing the various covers and caps that cross my path - our streets are full of these wonders.

Ripping open boxes and putting stuff on shelves may seem like pure drudgery and not a creative way to spend one's time, but oddly it can be. Objects that have accrued a certain look or meaning in one site look transformed when they are displayed at a fresh angle, height or lit differently. Sometimes they appear changed when they are simply viewed from a new direction. Some of the treasures now look forlorn and rather undesirable whilst others have become lovely through translation. It is a very good evaluation process, a sifting has taken place and I find that my taste has changed - it is impossible to say how because it is just as eclectic and peculiar as ever, but a shift has definitely occurred. The cardboard boxes are folded flat and taken outside, hoovering happens and the fridge is filled with fresh food. Suddenly you are in a new home and as you fall asleep to the unfamiliar traffic rumble, your objects chatter down below in their new locations and the next chapter in your life begins.

I have no oven and until it is replaced I was prepared to make do with hob-cooked food and the occasional takeaway. But I do love to barbecue and meandering round John Lewis in Oxford St my eyes fell upon a gas camping stove by Weber. It takes a small gas cylinder and folds up to be eminently portable. It was definitely not a shopping necessity but it came home with me. By the way, if anyone wants a taste of what shopping in Cold War era USSR must have been like they should try using the John Lewis customer collection area. A Kafka-esque sense of meaningless paperwork and people wandering around doing absolutely nothing pervades. It is a scary place as you are compelled almost immediately to believe that you will never receive your stuff and if it does come, there will be some weird reason why you cannot actually take it away. An hour shopping followed by an hour waiting. In my new minute garden beneath an overcast sky with an occasional spit of rain I road-tested the new baby barbecue. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Putting the beef on at a very high temperature I added the pudding bowl with oil in it and five minutes later, with the beef duly browned, the oil was scalding hot and the batter sizzled reassuringly as it was poured in. I reduced the temperature so as to avoid overcooking the beef and half an hour later we consumed delicious pink beef with a charred exterior accompanied by dense and aspirationally fluffy Yorkshire. This was a first for me and it was an acceptably tasty experiment. It made the hours pulling down deeply embedded ivy from the walls of the garden seem like a distant but painful memory. It made the heavy bags of garden waste dragged to the front seem like a delight. Every enthusiastic al fresco cook should have a go - barbecued Yorkshire Pudding.

Week - 72 - Easter in Bourgogne, with Salt and Wine

 

For many years now I have been boring my friends to distraction with my obsession with salt. If the conversation flagged over dinner at any point, I could always be counted upon to regale them with an account of how the French and American Revolutions, or Indian Independence, began with salt issues. Or, I would point out the linguistic route of the word 'salary', or that Salzburg was a mountain of rock salt. I would also note for their delectation that our bodies need an astonishing 250 grams of salt in them to be healthy. In short, I am a salt mine of information which is little or no use to anyone except me. Friends and relations therefore often bring me salty pieces of information confident that they will elicit firm interest. So when my friend Justin directed my attention to the magnificent French royal saltworks at Arc et Senans, built in the last quarter of the 18th century by the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, I was eager to visit. It has taken me nearly 10 years to do so but I am finally on my way.

I am driving as I also have a second pilgrimage to fulfil. Together with Felicity, my dear friend and former work colleague from Mallett, I used to drink a lot of a white wine called Mâcon Davaye. In the days of Mallett at Bourdon House, when we needed a bottle of wine in a hurry we used to run up the road to Laytons Wine Merchant. They were always helpful and charming and encouraged us to try different things. One time they offered me a Mâcon Davaye as it was being discounted, and they also rated it - it was a promotion rather than a disposal strategy. It was delicious and very reasonably priced. Felicity and I bought all their remaining stock, and begged them to source more. Over a couple of years we drank it as much as we could. But the price rose, moving it from everyday drinking into the territory of treat, then to special treat, and finally to out of the question. My Davaye days were over. But I retained a nostalgic love of the mineral, fruity and flowery flavour and I have hankered after returning it to my drinking fold. The area around Mâcon is home to St Veran and Pouilly-Fuissé as well, so it made sense to join up the obsession with salt with a few days pouring aromatic wines down my willing and welcoming throat and filling the car with delights for London.

My adventure has its first pit stop in the Grand Place in Arras. This is a market square that compares to the great Grand Place in Brussels but is nothing like as famous. It is not as glittery as its Brussels namesake but it is very coherent, consistent and extremely large. Where the square in Brussels can claim to be a world famous tourist attraction, the one in Arras serves principally as a weekly food market and the town's main car park. Poor Arras. Or lucky Arras?! Walking round this charming but largely overlooked medieval market town the silence was broken by the distinctive low heavy growl of Harley Davidsons. It turned out to herald a biker wedding and the party were roaring round the squares hooting their horns and revving their engines. The locals seemed to take it in their stride with hardly a turned head but I was bewitched by their huge bikes and their wedding clothes. The tableau presented itself as an updated medieval wedding with horses and carts, the uproar was timeless and wonderfully appropriate and uplifting.

In Burgundy on Sunday I spotted a small 'vide grenier' in the picturesque village of Riel-les-Eaux - even though antique dealing is my job I cannot resist doing it as a hobby too. I bought a delightful 19th-century rummer for 20 cents and an 18th-century Chinese export plate for 2 euros. It was a warm and friendly day and the locals all teased me by saying everything I looked at was once owned by the English royal family. Lady Diana had used and been very fond of all the pewter plates of one trader, another was certain Prince Charles loved using his cracked and aged pottery coffee bowl and I could acquire it for a mere 2 euros. Who could resist?

Driving down into the Jura, famed for its Vin Jaune, was splendid as wide open, rape-filled fields gave way to hilly alpine scenery with half-timbered chalets. Then back into flat lands for the approach to the salt works. Needless to say I arrived during lunch - the site was closed. In France the period of lunch is still sacrosanct. So I sat in the sunshine and ate a baguette sandwich of ham and the local Comte cheese washed down with a dark, almost red, rose. As I munched, I looked across at the entrance, with its round windows carved as amphora issuing gushing water like the attribute of a Roman river god, and the temple-fronted Guard House, reputedly based on Ledoux's studies of the temples at Paestum, with a dramatic, craggy, arch like in an Italian grotto but symbolising rock salt, I knew I was going to fall in love with this semi-circle of extraordinary buildings. The structures are famous for their pioneering and powerful neo-classical designs but, there are also elements exhibiting a strong agricultural character. This may have given Ledoux's contemporaries reassurance through a sense of familiarity and recognition, as the neo-classical mode must have seemed very shocking almost revolutionary. Ledoux has been cited as a Utopian, someone who saw that industrial buildings might have the potential to actually engender a better quality of life for those who worked in them or simply encountered them. Around the Royal Salt Works he envisaged a model town, with factories and public buildings, all designed in the new fashion and fashioned in exotic shapes. Constructed and conceived around optimistic and healthy lines which would bring the workers both happiness and greater productivity. Only what we see today was built, but his more extensive designs for the salt works, together with designs for other schemes are on show at the site. They are thrilling and truly visionary. Sadly none of the actual salt-producing machinery survives but the buildings and the philosophy they illustrate truly justify their UNESCO World Heritage Site designation.

The town of Mâcon, cut through by the river Saône in slow, wide and stately mode, gives its name to a plethora of wines. Two days were spent quaffing and climbing, beginning with the rock at Solutré, which was used as a place of refuge and a look-out by people living in the region over 50,000 years ago. Standing on its peak, vineyards stretch out in all directions as far as the eye can see. Tasting is an arduous and absorbing task and I forgot to eat lunch and ended up eating an emergency Mars Bar stuffed into the glove compartment by the Eurotunnel in! But I got to Davaye, Lugny and Pouilly, where I bought some dozens and half dozens and weighed the car down until the steering and brakes became unhealthy. All the Domaines are interwoven in their grape production and they all claim that their methods of production are the same, but apart from the bare bones of the taste, they differ wildly in all the details of the balance between the flavours. I am looking forward to revisiting the experiences in London.

My last treat of the trip was the market in Chatillon-sur-Seine. Occupying a utilitarian post-war shed, 20 or so food producers display their wares every Saturday. They start at 8 and by midday nearly everything has gone. The smiling bread man has his child with him and looks fashionable with a pony tail and an unshaven face. The butcher is old-school with a belly and blood on his apron, whilst outside a pretty middle aged woman trumpets the freshness and moist nature of her fruit-infused Macaroons. This is a classic market. I buy goat's cheese, dried magret de canard flavoured with herbs and ground pepper, and a half kilo of fresh prawns in their shells. These are quickly consumed over lunch with chilled wine from Mâcon and Easter ends with a long, careful and slightly unsteady drive back to London.

Week 71 - Shopping and Sipping in the South

 

On Sunday it's goodbye to the Oval, London, and hello to Montpellier, Languedoc, where Michael, my carpet dealer friend and I picked up a rental car and drove to Avignon. The latest iteration of the thrice yearly confluence of brocantes/deballages at Beziers (which we skipped), Avignon and Montpellier is upon us. By 7pm we are sipping kir in the courtyard of the Hotel D'Europe in Avignon. It is a perfect French hotel. An ancient and cosseted tree dominates, trimmed and trained to the Nth degree. The soft yellow stone of the surrounding buildings exudes a deep soul-warming glow. The staff are nonchalant to the point of surliness and yet when our drinks come they immerse us in a deep joyous reverie. It is April; we are outside; there is still a warm zephyrous breath left in the evening sun and we are going to have a great couple of days. Michael is a dear friend - we were at university together. He can be a trifle laconic but our buying trips are always fun and full of easy conversation. In London, he bears the weight of the world on his shoulders but here he feels liberated, on holiday. We dine at the 'Fou de Fafa', named after a comic song by Flight of the Conchords, mocking people who pretend to speak French. The waitress comes from Streatham but her command of the French language is immaculate. The tourists are delighted by her seamless bilingualism. We drink deep of dark red wine and consume pâté de foie gras followed by duck. By the time we repair to bed in preparation for our early start we are really enjoying all things French.

The fairs are extraordinary: everyone has to wait together outside the gates, the vendors and the buyers standing shoulder to shoulder with their noses grating against the railings. The gates open and a frantic stampede follows. Several thousand people rush around frenetically, some looking for buying opportunities, some desperately heaving large pieces of furniture out of the backs of their white vans. The sellers come from Spain and Italy as well as France and they bring their picnics with them too. By midday, when the tumult is over, a wonderful panoply of international breads, cheeses and salamis are pulled out of linen napkins and a feast begins. Laughter and bottles being uncorked take the place of hard negotiation and food swaps supplant goods and art.

After Avignon, we used to race down to Nice to visit a carpet dealer and I would browse along the street of dealers near the port. It was always nearly 5 hours of driving with usually little or nothing to show for it. This time Michael decided to skip this leg of the trip and instead we went on a micro road-trip, driving happily down picture-postcard tree-lined roads with rolling hills and lush fields of grass to left and right. We arrived in the walled town of Uzes where we ate outside the walls in a little courtyard restaurant called 'Au Petit Jardin'. We felt slightly fatigued by the hoards braying inside the town and this presented a tranquil refuge. Our lunch was grilled goat's cheese and salad with that special dressing that is signature to a certain sort of bistro throughout France. It has a distinctive richness and smoothness, coupled with a distinct and bright sharpness. The cheese was creamy and oozed luxuriously out from its crust. Following a fierce espresso, we headed on to La Grotte des Demoiselles. This site was developed for tourism in the 1930s and bears a curious Art Deco cast, despite being a magnificent and enormous collection of vast chambers of stalagmites and stalactites, millions of years old! The funicular railway that takes you up and the signage combine to place you in a period mood. Even the shape of the tunnels and the stairway balusters conjure up a pre-war world, when tourism and holidays for the masses were in their infancy. After oohing and aahing suitably at the hugeness and splendour, we continued our journey on to Montpellier. Arriving in the satellite town, Antigone - the creation of architect Riccardo Boffil - for the first time is quite a shock. Built in the 80s, it already looks really dated and has a strangely fascist feel, borrowing and distorting neo-classical ornament for shopping malls and hotels. It may yet become brilliant as time reinvents it as a period fantasy rather than the ghastly pastiche reminiscent of the worst of Disney that it now appears to be.

Tuesday morning brought the same furore as at Avignon - but Montpellier is twice the size. Several English dealers were patrolling the pavilions and squares and, when asked, they all moaned about the good old days and how the fair was not what it used to be. I never knew the good old days so I just run around delighting in the oddities and charm that I encounter unfettered by nostalgia. At midday, as the dealing day ends, we have a glass of Champagne from a kiosk there: for 5 euros you get a plastic flute and non-vintage fizz; for 6 you get a real glass and vintage. This is what you call a no-brainer! Michael has always had a passion for random Chinese restaurants and he inveigles me into sampling the buffet place over the road from the fair. It is very popular and half an hour after opening it is a seething mass of hungry patrons. Why? It was pretty disgusting. But I ate a bit, having paid my 14 euros - and left feeling slightly queasy. The airport is just a hop away so only a few minutes later we were checked in and relaxedly sipping coffee waiting for the plane.

On Tuesday night, I am back in central London rather poorer, having bought more than I intended. Each purchase had been both a commercial pleasure and a human encounter; in addition to arranging the shipping back to London through Stuart and his cheery crew at Alan Franklin is an integral part of the adventure. I even like the scribbled pink under-copies that succinctly describe the expenditure. I have arrived in time to celebrate, with our Masterpiece team, the first of the Exhibitor Information Days. For three days we host a gathering consisting of our fair builders and co-founders (Stabilo), our PR team (Gong Muse), our vetting manager, and us. Together we offer advice to exhibitors on any aspect of the preparations for the fair that may be concerning them. On this, the first night, we have established a tradition of dining together. This year we decide to go to The Punchbowl, a pub in Farm St - it is noisy and robust and though our table is supposed to have only 10 people we are a party of nearly 15. Everyone is cheerful and obliging and we 'bond' over fish and chips and rose. As the night draws to a close, precipitated by the abrupt calling of 'time!', I feel a huge surge of optimism being part of such a hard-working and tightly knit team.

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Week 70 - Spring Has Sprung

 

The clocks went forward and the blossom looks lush, pink and heavy on the trees. Spring brings eagerly anticipated light and those ephemeral tiny-petalled flowers which have burst from their buds almost look relieved after all the effort they have made. The vital and vigorous business of being out in the open somehow washes into each aspect of city life. Missing that hour of sleep is absolutely no loss as we enjoy the days which merge into longer, lighter-hearted evenings.

At 7 o'clock on Wednesday, Crafted opened at the Royal Academy. It was not dark as I tried to enter by the wrong entrance; my Spring enthusiasm hastened me round to the correct entrance at the back with a smile rather than a scowl. This year, the show is sponsored by the watchmakers Vacheron Constantin and several rooms on Burlington Gardens are filled with earnest weavers and potters standing alongside young art student types, who hope they may turn out to have created the next big thing in design. Everyone is keen, but there is a bit of a conflict between the creators and crafters, the polished steel versus the knitted jumpers from remote northern Scotland. My attention is drawn to the Vacheron engraver, who is beavering away at a desk; his skill is extraordinary and captivating as he fashions swirls and other patterns with a deft confidence and fluency which renders his genius all the more beguiling. I don't speak to him or engage in any way, I just hover like a schoolboy watching someone older play a video game in an arcade. I just watch and admire. I also quaff a couple of glasses of Nyetimber English sparkling wine. It is a bit brittle and lacks the subtlety of the proper stuff, but it is remarkably good all the same. Given time I think it will become a worthy alternative. Whilst hovering, I run into my dear friend Ben the lapidarist. He has just returned from the extraordinary Baselworld watch, jewellery and luxury fair. I have never visited this annual event but am told it is mind-blowingly decadent in the extravagance of the display. Ben confirms this.

He is an amazing looking man, 6ft 5 and entirely vertical, not a horizontal dimension to him at all. His thin, swept back hair accentuates his sharp darting eyes and an impressive hooked nose. He moves with a feverish intensity and is unsettlingly unpredictable in direction. We decide to repair to my new favourite bar in the Oval, the Cable Cafe. Half an hour later we enter the domain of Hamish, the master mixologist with the intellectual beard. I introduce Ben, the neophyte, and Hamish instantly announces that he has the perfect cocktail for him - the Corpse Reviver! I have a Beefeater Gin martini, which is perfection, and Ben graciously accepts the Corpse option. Debating the art and craft of Hamish and that of the Vacheron engraver makes for an entertaining end to the day.

With the onrush of Spring and the hour-change, so the gears shift for Masterpiece. Now we move from filling the fair to perfecting it. The exhibitors are undoubtedly the strongest group of international players we have yet had and we are all excited to see what they will bring. Now the PR team will go into overdrive and we need to make sure that the visitor experience is as seamless and sybaritic as possible. The vetting also begins to take up time as exhibitors send in images of items and the relevant chairmen need to assess as far as they can the legitimacy of the objects presented. It is a task that calls for both rigour and tact as the dealers have invested their money, their pride and their emotion in these pieces. If the vetter has doubts - and often they are just doubts - the dealer has to be handled with great care and diplomacy. But it is a time of increasing excitement and the buzz is growing as calls and emails are start flooding rather than trickling in.

On Saturday I cycled over to Portobello. I have not been for a while. Often as I lie in bed on a Saturday morning the urge to cycle over fades away. Friday night is often suffused with enthusiasm for getting up early in order to blow away the week's cobwebs with a good long cycle ride and a steady walk down the hill ducking and diving around the tourists. But as the light begins to creep through the curtains, so the lazy slug in me persuades me to stay underneath the duvet a bit longer. But this week I had another incentive: I was meeting Joost for breakfast at the Electric House, so I could not allow myself to laze about.

I sometimes avoid going to Portobello because I know I will buy something and though shopping is my purpose in life, not spending money can be a rest and a relief. I did consider going straight to the Electric, but Spring beckoned, so I pointed my trusty bicycle towards Notting Hill and off I went. After what seemed an eternity of gruesome booths of stuff, I found myself in front of an irresistible set of 19th-century brass measures and I knew I was bound to conform to the pattern. Breakfast was restoring too. Poached eggs with deep orange yolks, fatty thick bacon, a massive grilled half tomato, all mopped up with thick white country bread. And washed down of course with short little intense double espressos.

Joost is a dealer in Indian and Islamic art, but he has a passion for Japanese 20th-century bronzes. He has sucked me into this wonderful area of collecting and I now have a small group. We are meeting for fun, but also because he has a desk that he thinks I might be able to sell. With Joost is his little daughter Soraya, who is 5. She immediately charms all around by showing us her ballet medal. She has her school class bear with her that she must look after for a week. Soraya and the bear consume one croissant with jam and butter, and then another. She explores the world under the table and with tremendous concentration plays a game on my telephone, her little fingers, sticky with butter, croissant and jam (not to mention bits of fluff from the floor) press heavily on the keys. My children are 17 and 20, so long past this stage, and it is very charming both observing and reminiscing. After breakfast, I cycle off to see the desk. On the way I pass the Globe bar. Back before there were any children, we used to end many an evening here. It was a late-night/early-morning drinking place, full of representatives from all sections of society, linked by the desire for booze at 2 in the morning. It was entirely decorated in red plastic and the music was powerfully loud and deliberately cacophonous. The management definitely did not seem to want to encourage us to stay. But we all did, stay and stay. At the end of the night they used to play answering machine messages to a drum and bass background to finally drive us away. Today I see builders gutting it; another nail in the coffin of the old, all but lost, Portobello. I cycle on slightly saddened. The globe was not a nice place but it was special in its own way and now it's gone. Sadly the desk did not work out but it was in a lovely apartment in Portland Place and it is always fun looking around people's houses - especially such grand ones!

Week 69 - Milan to Coombe Bissett

 

Alitalia to Milan: arriving at City airport, embarrassingly early as ever, I found myself lost in its recently acquired slickness. In days of yore when we used to fly to Maastricht from City, it had an old school amateurishness. Once, flying to Scotland from here with Giles, the little airline we were using got very muddled over each aspect of the flight; tickets, check in, boarding - everything was chaotic. There was yet another delay and I asked too loudly whether the pilot had overwound the elastic band driving the propellers? Everything ground to a halt and the air hostess rather sheepishly came over and asked me to apologise to the pilot as he was not prepared to take off until I had. I did so with as much dignity as I could muster in the circumstances, which was not much.

Today City is like any international airport, beginning with a winding labyrinth of duty free. They all do it. It is a cunning way of making us admire every scent and every discounted bottle of vodka. The only failing is that it drives us all crazy with annoyance and disinclined to make a purchase. After the queuing for ticket checks and the subsequent indignities of the bag and body searches you press forward desirous of coffee, but you are forced to run the gauntlet of the duty free maze. Never mind, I am before too long parked behind a table and a nice overly keen waiter, ever so slightly reminiscent of Basil Fawlty brings me coffee, water and a brace of poached eggs on almost bearable brown toast. Phew!

I am collected in Milan by my host who greets me eagerly and enthusiastically even though we have never met before. I have a sudden rush of English reserve and withdraw mildly. After a swift luxurious journey into town in their chauffeur driven BMW I am deposited outside their shop in the Brera district. Milan is huge and sprawling but its great treasures are all in or around the Brera, The Duomo, the fabulous adjacent 19th century shopping arcade called the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, La Scala, the legendary Opera and Ballet house, and the Brera Picture Gallery. Here all the best shopping brands have their outlets but also, reassuringly so do a multiplicity of local shops selling everything from cakes to haute couture. My hosts have 5 shops in the district and they display and sell from each period of the whole of the 20th century from its first decade to its last, and they do so with amazing style and panache, and with astonish quantity. I have almost never seen so much stock. Every available space is filled, but unlike the Netherlandish warehouses where most of what you see is of little consequence or merit, here each item is chosen and is interesting at the very least if not desirable. I am here to look but I cannot resist buying a couple of wonderful things. The business is called Roberta e Basta and Roberta herself is a fountain of energy and enthusiasm. It practically crackles off her. Her son Mattia is charming and efficient but I see he spends a lot of his time holding his mother back. She says she buys every day, I do not doubt it. Over lunch she tells me the bare bones of her story. Beginning by buying period antiques, she turned to buying contemporary and modern in the 60s and thus she was decades ahead of her time in seeing that opportunity. But she never looked back and now she stands tall as others are trying to catch up. We drink Arneis, a Piedmontese grape that produces a delightful fresh and brittle taste which is a perfect lunchtime enhancement. The waiter comes to the table and says; what would you like to eat? We choose nothing from the menu, we just say what we feel like and it comes. I eat deep fried zucchini flowers stuffed with Mozzarella and the fillets of a really ugly looking fish, whose breed is a mystery to me. I have never seen it at a fishmonger in London. The flesh is an off white colour with a dark brown spine and it is presented amid black olives, roast delicate slices of artichoke and a scattering of cherry tomatoes. The son is being serious and practical, the mother and I have a fun time finishing off the wine.

Back in England, on Thursday, Giles and I head off to the west to see some mystery furniture. We are not told what we are going to see but we are promised lunch at Scott's if we are disappointed. Giles is reluctant to go without some indication of what lies ahead but I love the intrigue. The M4 is not a beautiful road, it is flat and dreary and the trucks rumble along constantly vying for supremacy and thereby blocking everyone. Eventually we peel off and the smaller roads bring a sigh of relief. After a couple of slightly missed signs we arrive and have the tour of treasures. Coffee is consumed and chocolate coated ginger biscuits. Our host has a battle with the packet, stabbing away at the plastic with a massive knife. Eventually he breaks in and discovers that the packet has already been opened at the other end, he hides his embarrassment by suggesting that the packet has been purchased pre-opened and that a biscuit theft has been perpetrated. We eat the biscuits. The object in question is admired and reflected upon, it needs to come to London for forensic checks so the Scott's lunch wager will have to wait.

We drive on to Marlborough and have a jolly lunch in a tucked away pub called the Lamb. Giles, from Mallett, has the cunning plan of asking in the vintage clothing store for a good eatery. Sure enough the staff have a local favourite, and, as we enter, there is a nice girl behind the bar wearing 50s clothes, so we know we are in the right place. I have a vintage lunch, a beef and ale pudding. It is stodgy and delicious. Half way through our lunch in this quiet backwater of Marlborough, a rowdy gang of OAPs burst in. Zimmer frames and walking sticks crash around and everyone is in a festive mood. Laughter and mutual teasing fill the air and Giles and I feel strangely youthful but delighted by this effusive and playful gang. We head off for our afternoon satisfied and cheered.

We finish the day in Coombe Bissett, in a dealer's converted chicken house. We talk trade and the fairs. He has a strong local and national business, both decorating and dealing, and his model clearly works well. We look round but there is not a lot to see, he has been preparing for Masterpiece and his treasures and surprises are being kept back for then. The secret of a successful fair is to do this. Those dealers that just turn up can be lucky, but the ones who search out the new and the exceptional and who hold things back for the big event tend to be the biggest winners. Nothing comes easily in this complex but rewarding phase in the market cycle. It is a cliché to say it, but I will anyway, the more you put in the more you get out!

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week 68 - TEFAF and Beyond

 

Monday morning at TEFAF brings a different mood; the preview day, Friday and the 1st weekend are widely considered the make or break days. If you have not done business by the close of the fair on Sunday, you are seriously gloomy. Many a dealer has dragged himself to his stand sale-less for 9 days and sold several pieces on the last day. So it is not hopeless, it is just a different character or tone. The clients with a serious intention of buying still come through but the museums and the hard core professionals have gone. As the day begins, there is still a massive throng hovering by the ticket barrier eager to get in, but they are for the most part, day trippers, looking forward to their annual quick visit to Maastricht. It is on these days when people ask you if the items are for sale, or if the pieces are antique, or let you know about something they have at home, which is exactly like an item on your stand, with only a few minor variations - like theirs is plastic and yours is made of precious stones. The dealers are in a soft mood, for the most part. People who have been too frantic to talk, now sit down and drink coffee in a leisurely way with their friends, colleagues and visitors. I drink far too much coffee. There are little stop points all over the fair where small vintage-looking miniature vans dispense brilliantly-fashioned elegant coffees in paper cups. They take huge pride in wiggling the milk jug in such a way as to create a fern or some such pattern in the top of the milk. The fair is vast and to look at everything is an equally vast challenge. Even though I have been here for a few days of set up, and already four days of the show, I feel rushed in trying to get round everything in my remaining three.

The show itself is only part of the point. None of the exhibiting dealers lives in Maastricht and therefore everyone comes from elsewhere. This lends the evenings a curiously festive air as 270 odd stands worth of traders fan out into the city, determined to eat and drink as energetically as they can. Men and women who would normally be home and tucked up in bed by 11.30 are out whooping it up until the small hours. The streets, though quiet, ring out with the enthusiastic shouts in a myriad of tongues. Of course, Cafe Sjiek is a key destination. But for the endurance party-goer there are nightclubs and late-night drinking holes where you could still be carousing when the fair opens again in the morning. There are a few mishaps, I heard of one foreigner who after drinking deeply of a particularly delicious eau de vie, decided to drive home. Not knowing the Byzantine one way and pedestrian-precinct-rich area, he drove into the square and was promptly arrested. But he got off with a caution and a stiff fine. The police in Holland are called the Politie and they are exceedingly polite! They do not have a problem with drink, merely traffic rule breaking. I managed to lose my telephone (yet again) in the supermarket and I went to the police to report the loss. They were charming but they were not interested in such a minor detail. I have never been dismissed with such elegance and a sense of being respected.

In Maastricht there is a dealer called Guus Roell. He has a large 19th century town house from whence he trades. He focuses on export and trade related to the Dutch East India Company. The house is elegantly arranged on three floors with objects of greatness and charm. During TEFAF he entertains every night. Parties of up to 30 people are fed and watered each evening. There is no menu, you just eat what you are given, though he does make an accommodation for vegetarians; less accommodating of the voguish gluten or nut allergies. It is great fun, you drink out of glasses which are copies of 17th century ones and you wander around the house before supper soaking up the house and its treasures by candlelight. When you sit down to dinner, you are introduced to your neighbours and thus begins a highly convivial evening during which you may not speak to your own guest hardly at all as you are swept up in a conversation at the other end of the table. Guus is grey haired, of modest height and has the rough hands of gardener, but he loves his objects and late at night he will pull out his latest beloved piece and talk you through its purchase, the hunt - the inspection - the capture/purchase and now though he loves it with a passion, he is eager to release it back into the wild. He caresses each item in a way that conveys his intensity, it can be almost erotic.

Wednesday bought the drive back to London, but the Saab took a detour to Brussels and we did a swift tour of the antique district around the Sablons and munched through some delicious fried fish from my favourite open air seafood restaurant the NordZee which is by St Catherine's. There is always a mad bustle around and you have to practically fight your way to the counter, then place your order swiftly and efficiently or the waiter will move on. They make wonderful miniature pieces of battered cod, tiny bacalao balls, grey shrimp croquettes, and calamari, but my personal favourite is what they call a crab burger. It is really a flattened crab cake with nothing but crab in it, it rests on rough bread with a thin layer of mayonnaise and rucola. It is quite simply perfect. Exiting Brussels via the nearby specialist mushroom dealer called Champigros, I sped to London laden with morels.

Thursday brought a visit to another fair. I had missed the opening, on Wednesday, of the BADA fair in Chelsea. This fair is a quintessentially British fair and it has a distinct aura of country weekends and weddings in marquees. But they get a very good crowd and the fair is incredibly easy and convenient to visit being slap bang in the middle of the Kings Road. As I walked round at about 6pm, many of the dealers were happy with business and all were complimentary about the serious quality of the opening day visitors. The fair was not crowded but there were a few people enthusiastically looking round. This fair is a stalwart of the London spring scene and it is the coun-terpoint to the LAPADA fair that takes place at the beginning of the Autumn.

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Week 67 - Approaches to TEFAF

 

The euro shuttle is does its job beautifully and sooner than expected I am crunching up the gravel visiting Paul De Grande at his schloss. The Kasteel van Snellegem is in the village of the same name but is accessed from Jabbeke, which is just over an hour from Calais. After a few visits the alien nature of these names wears off and it all becomes perfectly normal. Just off the motorway and conveniently located for the citizens of Snellegem is the Ardappelautomat - or in English, the automated potato dispenser. This one trumpets being, thank goodness, a 24 hour one. Such comforts are apparently available all over Belgium, just to deal with those last-minute potato crises that we can all suffer from. Paul De Grande is a hardened veteran in the business of antique dealing and one of the very few survivors from the days when I was starting out. He has a warehouse and a castle, every room heaving with stock - so crowded are they that you have to manoeuvre carefully around in order to avoid causing a catastrophe. He is white-haired, twinkly-eyed and very charming. He has a young wife and a 10 year old son who potters around complaining about his homework. Whenever I go with my assistant Francesca, Paul is particularly lively. Today, on my own, he is a little less enthusiastic. We sit and drink coffee at the Willy Rizzo table he bought from Willy himself back in 1972. We eat delicious chocolate ginger cakes and I wolf them down conscious that this is both my breakfast and my lunch. He is impressed and amused that I consume all that is put before me. He asks fondly after Francesca. I make a small purchase, squeeze them into the Saab and on I go.

Just outside Brussels is Joost Dusol. He is middle-aged, has a sober, slightly mournful demeanour, and unlike most country dealers his dress is neither deliberately casual nor smart. He is, I imagine, the very epitome of a proper Belgian trader, with a fine house by the austere church at the centre of Haaltert. We walk through his parade of sober white rooms but sadly I do not find any temptations this time. We have done lots of business over the years. He is always straightforward and honest, though he is quite dry.

From Joost I drive on to Maastricht, check in to my hotel and then on to Cafe Sjiek. To those of you who keep an eye on this blog cafe Sjiek will not be new. It is my home from home when at TEFAF and if I miss a night it would need to be for a good reason. The staff are very friendly and they even send me a Christmas card. This is really a bar that serves food, but you can get coffee etc during the day. It has two rooms, the first is a bar with five tables and stools, the second has a massive oval marble drinking table at which you perch, drink and consume. Around that are three large sharing tables at one end of which you often find yourself eating. Conversations with neighbours are inevitable and any given evening can turn into a very convivial party. In the old days when I was at Mallett we would all dine with separate friends and clients and without planning would end the evening drinking the devilish local eau de vies, which Andreas or Max (our two favourite staff members) would over-fill our glasses with; or we would order a bottle of Harmonium, the Nero d'Avola which has been my boon companion for many a Maastricht. One of the Mallett men likes to conclude the evening with a dozen oysters as a type of digestif. At 2 o'clock in the morning they seem as happy as at 9 at night to wheel out another battered tray of ice enriched with the bright and flavoursome Zeeland treasures that we all love.

In Brussels on Tuesday we were allowed early access to the Eurantica fair; this is a general fair that bizarrely has decided to have its grand opening on the preview day of TEFAF. Last year Amir Mohteshemi and I braved ice and snow to get to view. This year we once again took the trip together but this time the sun was shining and we had the addition of Amir's brother Mo. They are as hard-working and enthusiastic a pair of dealers as you will ever meet. They cover the miles and buy with tremendous discipline the finest Indian, Islamic and Chinese pieces. Unlike me, they are sanguine about driving or flying long distances fruitlessly, because they know that the right thing will eventually present itself.

We all enter TEFAF after vetting on Wednesday. Everyone rushes to their stands concerned that they might have lost a treasured item of stock to the vetters. The process of analysing the stock is comparable to Masterpiece: both fairs require that everything on show is subjected to close scrutiny by a posse of independent academics, restorers and dealers. The difference is that at Masterpiece the dealers are allowed to remain in the hall, allowing for a swifter appeal process and a generally more collegiate approach. Here in Maastricht the dealers have to leave the hall for a day and a half. To most, even the most careful and scholarly, the process is very stressful. Needless to say there is some heartache and intellectual battles take place to reverse decisions that are perceived as incorrect. By the end of the day everything is reordered and resolved and the trade go to bed to prepare for the marathon that is the preview day at TEFAF.

It is hard to précis or even fully describe the preview day. By 9pm, when with a 'bing bong' straight out of a railway station announces the day's end, over 10,000 people have gazed, drunk, eaten, discussed, kissed, stumbled, broken, laughed, cried, bought and sold their way through an epic of heaving crowds. The poor staff balance massive trays high in the air as they race to their dedicated stations trying to avoid the greedy fingers that throng around the food and drink. The picture here is not one of vultures, which are slow lazy scavengers, but rather of a bleeding body consumed by sharks or a cow stumbling blindly into a stream seething with piranhas. The crowds bustle around the black trolleys of food and little white plates become a blur as their contents are guzzled fast, so as not to not waste the opportunity of getting more. The day does have a flow - with a slowish start, a frenetic middle and a calm-ish last hour. But the main aisles are full, full, full of people to the extent that at times it is hard to walk along and it must be even harder to do business.

On Friday we were invited, by a Masterpiece prodigal son, Vanderven, to their annual dinner at the private club 'Groote Societeit" at the corner of the Vrijtof in central Maastricht. Floris and his wife Nynke are great hosts in the Dutch tradition. There is great solemnity, formality and a splash of academe. Tables are richly laid out and we have every treat and luxury. The Vanderven clients are very well looked after. What makes this event such a Dutch affair is that it is all done without pomposity or any self importance. Everyone is encouraged to have fun and Floris greets us with jokes and a relaxed good humour. I am delighted to have Vanderven back at Masterpiece.

We finish the evening with a flourish at Cafe Sjiek, naturally. As the first days pass I am sad that I am not in residence for the full 10. The difficulty is deciding whether I will miss Cafe Sjiek or the fair more!

Images supplied by Thomas Woodham Smith

Week 66 - Here We Go Again

Can it be that time of year again? Already? Really? Yes, astonishingly time has sped through the seasons and it is TEFAF time again. The Gander and White shipping trucks are blocking Dover St and the drivers are hooting their horns in the traditional fashion for the season. At Mallett the showrooms are in upheaval as the worker bees buzz around gathering pieces for the forthcoming festivities in Holland. I picture in my mind how many dealers streets are in the same throb of chaos around Europe and the world. TEFAF has over 250 exhibitors; each one of them has quite a large booth. Just imagine for yourself how many disgruntled normal street users there are. Let us say that each dealer manages to disrupt 100 people directly or indirectly, whilst packing. There could well be more. But it is an exciting time and wherever I go the air is rich with Maastricht TEFAF. Dealers and clients ponder whether it will be a vintage year or not; the economy is improving, but events in Russia and Syria cloud one's enthusiasm. Inevitably, some dealers will triumph, some will fail, but most will be 'fine'.

Easyjet delivered me safely to Barcelona on Wednesday. I had not been to this city for some time and it was an unalloyed joy to leave the gloom and rain of London for this bright, sunny, energetic business city. I have been called in to look at a collection that may be for sale. It is in an apartment and we drive straight there. I have no time to roam the thoroughfares and it is strangely disconcerting to not get ones bearings. Our host welcomes us and we sit on his balcony and discuss life. I don't fully understand this function of getting to know people but it was apparently important to swap tales of the past and discuss areas of London that might or might not have had a good restaurant in them once. The owner/host is dressed traditionally and formally, wearing a business suit and a tie. He is tall, grey haired and distinguished looking. He and the others smoke relentlessly and his voice has the distinctive gravely tone of a regular smoker, especially a Spanish one. As the day progresses his jacket and tie go by the wayside and he substitutes cigarettes for stubby aromatic cigars, I wonder if being more relaxed means he reaches for the hard core tobacco.

We pause for a sandwich lunch. Everyone is feeling smug that we are having a working lunch and make amused remarks about how hard working the Barcelonans are as compared to the 'slackers' in Madrid who take endless long lunches. The sandwiches come from Mauri. This bakery dates back to the 1920's and there is something redolent of a bye-gone age about the elegance and delicacy with which it is all presented. Lovely wax paper packages, all branded and exquisitely folded, each item is laid out on a gold backed crinkle edge cardboard tray. There is a gutsy quality to the offering, typically Spanish; but it is done with such elegance that it becomes very refined. We have a tray of mini bread rolls and wrapped crustless sandwiches containing ham or beef with wafer thin slices of tomato. We have before us: a tray of croquettes and a tray of differently flavoured miniature doughnuts. Each tray takes a serious beating but the doughnuts are wiped out completely, each mouthful accompanied by a guilty apology from the consumer.

I spend the rest of the afternoon completing my survey of what could be available. I photograph and measure like a man possessed. It is a great collection of very English taste pieces. Chinese porcelain sits alongside Chinese lacquer accompanied by English furniture and chinoiserie. He bought in the 80's so these pieces were acquired near the height of the market. He may not be able to cope with the drop in values that we have observed since 2008 (it had begun before but the crash exacerbated it). However I do not want to dampen my own spirits. It is good for the soul to see great things, and even if we do not buy much, or anything, it is very restoring to share this man's enthusiasm for the style and the objects that have been all our careers.

Back in London I repair at about 10.30 at night to a place near the Oval called the Cable Cafe. This simple and simply decorated bar has one man running it. He is of medium height and is distinguished by have a rather ragged beard, that outlines his chin rather than covering his face. He sits low behind the bar reading a thick book. I suspect it is something complex or Russian. They offer only a few beers and a modest selection of wines; their main thing is cocktails. Hamish is our bearded hero. He can mix like a master. We had espresso Martinis and classic Martinis mixed with Beefeater Gin, which apparently has citrus 'notes' and therefore picks up the lemon twist. Then we had them again. Both times they were immaculate, as good as anything I have had in the states. Perfect balance and perfect temperature, they floated down after a hard day measuring and flying.

I looked at my diary on Thursday and I realised everything in it was described as a "meeting". I think I am becoming fed up with meetings. I am even fed up with writing the word 'meeting'. How can ones life be crowded with meetings? Do we not just 'see' people? Office life should provide an environment where meetings do not need to happen. We are all already in an all day 'meeting' called 'work'. But the viral affliction of meetings infects us at work too. My colleagues are always saying 'lets have a meeting in ten minutes'. I suppose it is a necessary evil as it allows us to focus on one issue or one topic and then move on, but I feel like having a bit of a quiet scream in a dark corner about the relentlessness of 'meetings'.

Masterpiece is at a fulcrum moment and it is always the case that TEFAF comes at that crucial moment, the last few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of exhibitors are falling into place and we are ready to move from the plan stage to the build stage. It is very exciting, even though the fair is still months away, it feels imminent. Dealers who do both fairs plan what to hold back for our fair or what to prepare. The publicity is starting to build up and journalists start calling to ask what might be the 'new' and the 'different' this year. Masterpiece has established for itself the onerous expectation that we will continue to improve and innovate every year. It is a pressure but one we welcome.

I end my week packing my trusty Saab and pointing it East towards Maastricht. See you there.

Week 65 - Silence

 

Last Thursday night the drain burst outside the Oval tube station, in the Clapham Road, where I live. That most disturbing partnership of the words 'raw' and 'sewage' came into play as the road and its neighbours were awash to above waist height. Disgusting certainly, but the following days brought a closed road and men in high viz clothing power-washing everything; and only cyclists were left rolling along. I have never known such a hush. The normally raucous, siren and horn rich road is dawn-like. I hear trees sway, I can hear bird song; the world seems strange - uncanny but at the same time delightful. It puts me in mind of the great silences of this art-dealing world.

The best or possibly one of the most important silences in the art world is the one that lurks portentously between a client and the dealer. Standing before a work, the dealer says his piece: he praises its line, its colour, its quality and rarity. He moves on to express what good value it represents and that quite astonishingly he might consider taking even less than the already good price at which it is being offered. The client stands beside the dealer, listening and occasionally asking a question and soaking up all the proffered expertise. Then, when the dealer has finished his speech, there comes the silence. It is a fat silence, full of all that has come before and full of anticipation for what is coming next. For this is the silence of an impending sale. The silence can drag on a bit long but the cardinal rule is that the dealer must not be the one to break it. If he or she does so, then the spell is broken and the sale will not be made. The client speaks and the dealer can exhale. Business has been done and noise can re-enter the room.

The second great silence is the silence before the hammer drops at the end of an auctioned lot in a sale. The bidding flits between the auctioneer, the bidders in the room, and, these days, those on the phone and internet. The bidding slows and then stops, the auctioneer says ' Final warning' or some such phrase and then his gavel hovers. The silence that follows has the highest bidder willing it to drop and the vendor hoping for another bid from elsewhere. It has the uninterested bidders waiting for a later lot and impatient for it to arrive. It has the train-spotting types who write down the results of each lot in their catalogues, whose pencils are poised. All eyes are on the gavel and all ears are waiting for the bang that signals the final figure. Sometimes this silence is fleeting, sometimes it takes what seems like a lifetime.

One of the most exquisite silences is the one endured waiting for Oscar Humphries to arrive for lunch. I met Oscar when he was editor of Apollo - he has now left and we remain good friends. I have agreed to meet him at Sumosan, the Japanese restaurant I adore in Albemarle St. I have tried to institute a rule by which if Oscar is late he pays - but it never works. Fifteen minutes late, he rings to say he is going to be fifteen minutes late. Almost inevitably he is 45 minutes late by the time he actually arrives. As always, he is instantly forgiven as his febrile brain and winning charm puncture any rising annoyance. He is full of exciting plans and though I have no idea whether any of them will bear fruit, they are fascinating and intriguing to debate. He shoots off after lunch, currently only a little late for his next appointment.

On Thursday, in an ante-diluvian (before the Oval flood) moment, I went with the Masterpiece CEO Nazy to the VIP opening of Art14. The hall at Olympia is a venue I know so well and I had memories of Mallett and other stands from past summer fairs spinning in my thoughts. Nazy's view of the hall is not blurred by any distracting nostalgia. She studies the art and weighs up the quality of the dealers and their displays. The show looked good - the organisers seem to have done well with gathering a very international roster of exhibitors. The overall appearance is the international pared down look and no-one uses much colour. The floors are bare and everyone employs lights of the most basic variety. Though this could not be more different to the Masterpiece aesthetic, it is what contemporary dealers seem to be most comfortable with. There were plenty of people there but it was hard to judge at this early stage whether deals were being done. One of the gloomiest silences in the art world is that of a fair where the traders are all standing around with no visitors and the aisles echo with a dead silence. Art14 was not like that.

I have a dealing friend who is a great single-handed exponent of the silence. He tells wonderful trade stories about people and things. They are unusually insightful - by listening to the end you invariably find that there is some special pertinence to the tale he is recounting from years gone by. He cunningly begins by asking you if you remember something or other. This trick both includes you in the conversation and excludes you because of course there is no way you could remember. His memory is elephant-like. He picks you up and nimbly trots along with his story - but once you are ensnared, he slows down to a snail's pace. Sometimes there can be a full minute or even two between single words, as you drool and perspire desperate for him to continue - let alone finish. But woe betide you if you try to anticipate or try to guess which way a sentence will unfold. He gets irate and looks reproachful and disconsolate, so you have to just sit back and engage in the ever-lengthening silences. It is always worth it.

I finished the week chatting to Adrian Amos, owner of the antique and salvage company Lassco. We had coffee in Brunswick House in Vauxhall, which he owns and is developing. It is a beautiful 18th-century house which sits on Vauxhall Cross roundabout below a Leviathan housing development. The poor building is dwarfed by its surroundings but it has retained its dignity and is now a rambling antique shop with a low-key but charming restaurant attached. Adrian is first and foremost an entrepreneur and has a portfolio of interesting and quirky spaces in London and beyond. One day I would like to do business with him as he is the epitome of creative. But my idea this time is not for him, so the dream will have to wait. Nonetheless, the coffee was delicious, and that is my last great silence for this week - the one achieved in anticipation of the first sip touching your palette.

Week 64 - Change or No Change

Some experiences pall under the burden of frequent repetition, some just get better and better. Repetition can bring consolation and comfort; it can reassure us to find and enjoy the consistency of certain places and tastes.

Le Petit Cafe is a tiny restaurant above a sandwich bar in Stafford Street, a tiny cut-through between Albemarle Street and Dover Street. They serve a short list of pasta dishes, a couple of salads and a dish of the day. Everything on this almost severe menu is neat and delicious. The pasta is fresh and always al dente. The Penne al Arrabiata is pretty much perfect, but for real decadence try the Escalope Milanese with Pasta Pomodoro. The crispy crust is crowned with a row of milky mozzarella slices alternating with sun-dried tomatoes. I wash this down with San Pellegrino lemonade diluted with sparkling mineral water. I have enjoyed this feast on a regular basis since Masterpiece moved with Mallett to our current offices in Dover Street. To enter you have to push your way along a narrow corridor past the queue of people waiting for sandwiches and mount the winding stairs to the first floor. This is a tiny haven of calm. There are only 6 tables and luckily they are rarely all occupied; sometimes you need to book but usually not. The fair-haired waitress who holds dominion over this area smiles sweetly and knows her regulars. She also avoids any superfluous communication - she does not chat or engage in witty banter. In this perfect reserve she is like the Asian girl who has cut my hair for more than 7 years without our exchanging names or biographies. Today I am lunching with Philip Hewat-Jaboor, the Masterpiece chairman, to review the vetting procedures and committee members. Though we are productive, the conversation ranges over many subjects and, for a brief moment, the sun shines and the room is bathed in sunlight, throwing strong shadows onto the tables and diners. It is one of those happy moments when the universe falls into order and everything is in its correct place. A happy repetition.

We said goodbye to Scholars House this week. This fine early nineteenth-century building, standing on Clapham High Street, has been home to Mallett's storage and van, alongside the Hatfields restoration business, since 2006. The building has been sold and everyone is moving out. New premises have been found nearby on a small business estate in Sidney Road. Aussie Man & Van have removed everything and the rooms are as they were when I first looked roun,d thinking about how it might work as a home for the Mallett workshops. So much has changed since then - even though it is only 7 years ago, it feels almost as if we live in a different world. The Managing Director Anna Cardinale has overseen an amazing, almost military, operation of bundling everything up and relocating. My role has been to organise a leaving party. I race round Booker, the supermarket for shopkeepers and caterers, and gather the basics of beer, wine, burgers and buns. We set up my gas barbecue in the romantically dilapidated Conservatory - and we're away. The rooms are so empty that some of the lads kick a ball about, all the while thinking about the furniture that was there but a few days earlier and enjoying the rebelliousness of playing football indoors. The party passes off gently and the melancholy of leaving pervades. All those habits that the various occupants have forged over time have now to be parceled up and packed away into the memory file. Change.

One of the most exciting projects coming up at Masterpiece is creating the second annual sculpture walk. This year we approached the Gallery Thomas Dane to curate a single-artist show of the work of Philip King. This remarkable man looks exactly as an artist should. His eyes are sharp and observant and his wild untamed grey eyebrows seem to underline his creativity. We are looking round Ranelagh Gardens, which lie beside the grounds where the Masterpiece structure takes residence. It is drizzling with rain with the occasional heavy patch. Tom from the gallery stoically walks round with us getting damper and damper. He and Philip are thinking about which works will go where; photocopied photographs of pieces become limp with rain as they are consulted and considered. The end result is far from limp however and I can see Philip's enthusiasm mounting as we briefly survey his life of work through these pictures of monumental and striking works in iron and painted iron. For a moment, we take shelter in the Soane pavilion which sits in the centre of the garden. There the in-pensioners have inscribed some of the bricks with their initials. The oldest one I spotted was dated 1877. This charming graffiti seems like an organic work of art especially when examined by this artist and dealer. After a couple of hours we repair for coffee at La Bottega in Lower Sloane Street. This little chain of coffee and sandwich shops has delivered a consistently great coffee for a few years now. Add to that delicious ricotta cannoli. Revival sweeps over us and we step back out into the day ready for battle.

I cycle off to meet my old friend Nick Chandor. He has been behind the clothes designer Paul Smith's new shop designs for ages and was my co-conspirator when Mallett and Paul Smith did a joint show of the work of photographer and furniture designer Willy Rizzo many years ago. We meet at 10 Greek St which is a small restaurant serving clean and simple British food with a minimum of fuss. I have wanted to eat here for ages but they don't take reservations in the evening and I hate queuing for food. We reminisced, and he told me about finally leaving Paul Smith and becoming a consultant to a number of different establishments. He has not changed at all except for giving up booze for a while. He has a pointy elfish grey beard, is 6ft 3in and has always and continues to sport trousers that are 6 inches too short. It is very fashionable, apparently. A friend of his once teased him that he was clearly buying his trousers in instalments! We spoke of a possible collaboration but our encounter was more about recovering a missed slice of life.

The week ended in the King's Road with James Harvey, who has been a great source of creative ideas over the last few years. He is constantly planning and plotting how to improve and develop his business; it is great to admire his verve and consider how many dealers' businesses would benefit from his level of energy. We had lunch at the Mona Lisa, a King's road legend. Tucked away in the council block of unappealing shops at Worlds End, it is a slice of another time and era. All types dine here, from two large and vociferous Poles enthusiastically tucking in to large steaks with a bottle of dark red wine, to a group of old ladies having tea and sandwiches. I had never been here and it was magical to step back into what felt like the swinging 60s.

The week had been about novelty, change and consistency, and the flow had been fairly evenly balanced, which felt about right.

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Week 63 - A Martini and Masterpiece

The dry Martini is the ultimate cocktail for me. I have a deep and historic relationship with the Black Russian. On transatlantic flights I take great comfort from a spicy Bloody Mary. I have been known to find a Whiskey Sour both nurturing and rewarding. Recently, I have been having a bit of a diversion with Daiquiris. I can also recall a special moment buddying up to a 'perfect' Manhattan. But in the end the alcoholic sonnet that is a dry Martini reels me back in.

The Martini has few ingredients, vodka or gin, blessed by a suggestion of vermouth, then added to with olive or lemon peel. But from this very precise and tight framework, all manner of variety can be created. My friend Carrie, a scion of the Kentshire dealing family in NY and a Masterpiece exhibitor, loves a Dirty Martini, one with a splash of brine from the olive jar. Ordering for her is predictable but she is very exacting about the balance, and many a cocktail has been returned to the bar with disappointment. In Japanese restaurants, you sometimes get a Saketini, which has a deceptive delicacy, as it seems so soft and gentle. Only when you try to stand up, does its full strength become apparent.

Allegedly the original Martini was made from Plymouth gin, and the cocktail is basically a way of drinking ice cold neat gin with a dash of something to soften the intensity. But that celebratory post-prohibition alcohol-fest belies the sophistication of a well-mixed Martini. Some bars have become legendary for them; in London, Dukes Hotel in Mayfair makes a fine classic Martini. It used to be a rule that the waiters would bring a maximum of two to any guest. Any more and you would be incapable, and worst of all unable, to appreciate the subtlety of the mixologist's art. I have broken that rule myself and all I can say is that the rule is best abided to..... It was a long story, I will tell you one day. Suffice to say, I am not crowned in glory at the end.

On Tuesday evening, I was seated with friends at a table on the newly refurbished 5th floor at Shoreditch house. Chris was drinking lager (a sort of health kick he is on at the moment) whilst Justin wanted something wintery, so we got him a Manhattan, which I think of as a winter Negroni, because of the whiskey. I decided to go for what I have dubbed a fussy Martini. That is one when you specify exactly all the ingredients. Stolichnaya Gold vodka, Noilly Prat vermouth, lemon twist (just the oil, not the peel), very very cold, and straight up. I waited for ages for my drink feeling parched and sad as the others talked and sipped. Eventually it came, the waiter saying he was sorry for the delay but he had been forced to make a slight change, as they had run out of Stoli gold. Oh no, I thought. And I lifted the glass gingerly and nervously to my lips. The slight and delicate aroma that captured my imagination as it rested for a microsecond below my nose augured delight, and the taste when it exploded in my mouth was one of joy, love, adoration and greed for more all rolled into one ecstatic flavour. I did not want to swallow, it was such a taste miracle. It won't be for everyone, in fact purists will abhor it, but for me my pleasure in the Martini has now passed onto another level. Stolichnaya Vanil was the unanticipated variation and I am a goner, I am a lost soul, I am going to run off into the sunset clutching these key ingredients to the perfect drink.

The week had begun with breakfast, joined by most of the Chairmen of the vetting committees at Masterpiece. The fair may be months away, but it is right round the corner in our minds. Vetting is crucial to the credibility of the fair. It is not a garnish, it is the main ingredient. For nearly two days, these chairmen, with their chosen teams, will independently and scrupulously examine and assess every object at the fair. 130 people will look at over 20,000 objects and give the visiting public confidence that what they are told an object is - can be relied on. We discussed over slightly miserable coffee and croissants the contentious issues, and consensus emerged. But most of all the spirit of collaborative scholarship became apparent. These 18 or so team leaders want to work together and supportively to realise a task for the buyer and, crucially, so that their peers will have respect for their process and scholarship.

The rain has continued and I have been soaked through cycling around London so often this week that my bedroom resembles a steaming laundry more than a place of rest. Mallett have been hosting a fantastic show of the photographer Harry Benson. He spent time with the Beatles and has photographed every president of the USA since Kennedy. Outside the shop are two massive posters. Arriving sodden and depressed it gives me a huge sense of relief to spot them, as soon as they hover into view, as I know I will be safe and dry for a while. Heading off with them behind me I pray that I will make it to my destination without too much water.

Spotting a gap, I dashed off to see Howard Walwyn in Kensington Church Street, and I arrived almost dry. He has a small elegant shop in which he has used bold shapes and colours to create a contemporary setting for fine, mainly late 17th and early 18th century English clocks. He is a colourful character, known as the professor, partly because of his academic approach and partly because of his mad flowing fair hair. We talked and discussed our trade friends and his stand at Masterpiece. I prepared to leave and discovered that I had left my wallet at the office. The rain was really coming down by then. An hour later I arrived at home with my wallet but wetter than I have ever been, and I include being in the sea or in the bath. I thought my bones were wet. I sat shivering in a towel by the radiator wondering how long this deluge would continue.

The peculiar thing is that between downpours the sun shines. The sky in brief interludes between hours and hours of rain is a fabulous almost warm blue. Punctuating the depressing gloom the most heartening brightness compensates, partially. I went to visit an old dealing friend James Millard. Stupidly and ignorantly I went to his old shop on the Fulham Road, where I was greeted with shocked disdain by the incumbents. Dover Street to Fulham Road is no distance at all, but I had to push on to his house in Richmond, a fair way to go playing rainfall roulette. But the gods were smiling and I got there and back with just the occasional half-hearted shower. James is part of an old school duo that have for many years scoured the USA and Canada repatriating English furniture and decoration. He lives in a fine large roomed Edwardian villa and he has just done the fashionable thing of digging out the basement. He has built a magnificent high ceiling subterranean gallery. Along with the internet he is ready for the next era of dealing. The room feels open and airy despite not being either. It has an almost James Bond lair feeling to it. He has traditional pieces but they look relevant and fresh in this environment. As I cycled back, still dry, I reflected that this was a powerful statement of optimism for a trading future.

Follow Thomas Woodham Smith on Twitter: www.twitter.com/twoodhamsmith

week 62 - Three Lunches and Water Everywhere

When travelling, the world can seem very small. A plane journey can throw one into the middle of anywhere in just a short while. London seems like the springboard from which anywhere can be reached. This week, the world appears very fragmented, though only locally. Rain keeps coming down in biblical proportions. This rain has been falling without respite for weeks and weeks. The streets are wet in every city, nation-wide rivers are bulging and bursting their banks, long forgotten deep wells have bubbled up and erupted with water. Any place where water is normally calm and passive, it is currently torrid and intense. Last week, in another stormy flare-up, the train station at Dawlish in South Devon was swept away and suddenly Cornwall was cut off from the rest of the country. In Somerset itself, beaches are littered with debris and the wind blows huge waves crashing against sea walls. All this effulgent natural brouhaha conjures up a myriad curious comparisons from history, novels and countries with more theatrical weather. On a train, despite delays and diversions and a rather charming slackening of ticket discipline, London is reached with a huge sigh of relief, as if a safe haven has been secured. Exhausted and overdue passengers drift out of the station heading for private and public transport feeling like they have survived; been through something. London may be wet, but it is quiet and safe and everything still works, with the minor extra frustration of a tube workers' strike.

In London work carries on as semi-normal. Certainly the profound and crucial ritual of lunch continues unabated. Sumosan in Albemarle St is a Japanese restaurant that serves a delicious and reasonably-priced set lunch. Japanese food is very scary, you can easily spend several hundred pounds on a fancy selection of rarefied sliced raw fish or equally often have a bargain meal in the same place. Sumosan manifests this exact dichotomy. Stick to the set menu and you can survive, go off-piste, or more correctly, a la carte, and you will require a second mortgage. I dined with Jorge and Andreas from Coll & Cortes, actual neighbours of the restaurant. Andreas used to be at Christie's and the thrill of being out of captivity and into the wild of dealing has given him a huge burst of energy. Sitting next to him is like sitting next to an unexploded bomb, he is so keen and enthusiastic. Jorge, who is a dapper European, has bright eyes and the ubiquitous semi-beard. He is the scion of a family of dealers, his father was and is one of the great dealers in decorative arts with a sixth sense for finding rare and unusual japanned pieces, made for his home country, Spain, and exported from England in the 18th century. Going through Vicente's files is like taking a tour through some of the great pieces that have been on the market in the last 30 years. Jorge has the drive and energy but has turned his attention to old master paintings, sculpture and works of art. He is based in London and he is pushing his business forward with unbelievable force. Lunch with these two left me inspired but exhausted. I ran back to the office to attend a PR meeting replete but fatigued. However, an hour or so later, having reviewed some of the excitements and novelty we have put in place for Masterpiece this year, my energies were topped right back up.

The next day, Nazy and I had the treat and privilege of visiting and having lunch at the Royal Hospital in the Great Hall. This magnificent panelled room is lined with oak tables and we sat at one near the end. Portraits look down and bedraggled flags hang from poles above; trophies of war and lists of the fallen compete for attention. On the table by the entrance, two enormous, black, boiled leather beer jugs or 'Jacks' sit importantly in solitary splendour. The food is not bad but it is more meaningful than that. It is comfortable food; food that neither challenges nor disgusts. Steamed pudding and warm custard enhance the end of the menu and everyone knows that they are going to be fine. We talk plans for this year and we conjecture about the future. The Hospital is in good shape itself with an ambitious plan underway for improvements and redevelopment throughout the grounds. Currently the paths and roads are all being upgraded along with the services hidden beneath the surface. We take a walk around Ranelagh Gardens, which is a wonderful hidden voluptuous pocket landscape beside the sober flat grounds that support our tent in June. In a few years' time, the place will be totally spick and span. The military officers that run the Hospital have given the place an air of concerted effort, like a military campaign in miniature and in peacetime. The in-pensioners are very well cared for both now and even more so in the future. In bold letters in Latin, the figure court proudly displays the royal founders of the hospital and their purpose for the care of those who have served this country in the armed forces. It is clearly a noble and rewarding work.

Image credit (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tehbus/sets/72157632135042981/with/8231817471/)

There is a dealer in Pimlico who used to work with me at Mallett called Tarquin Bilgen but it amuses me to dub him Tarquinius Maximus. He is tall and gangly and has an intense manner. He has created in his small corridor of a shop a selling machine of some potency. He has sold a few things to me and for me. I don't think I quite qualify as a good client but we get on well enough. He has the most charming manners and makes one feel both special and intelligent. I have made the habit of visiting twice a year for lunch. It is like going to a mental health spa. He does not drink so it is quite a reasonably priced treatment session. During each course he will admire and compliment ones innovation, pioneering spirit, previous and possible future achievements. This Friday was no exception. I had sold something that I had promised to him so I felt I owed him a special treat and I predicted I would get an especially large boost for my fragile confidence. I booked the Chinese restaurant Hunan in Pimlico Road. Discrete though the outside is, the interior is more so. You would never imagine that such a humble presentation should offer up such a feast. You do not see a menu, you simply point out any allergies you might have. After a brief pause, dishes begin to appear and two and a half hours later you are poured out onto the street to stagger off in search of exercise. Each dish is small and delicate. The balance between sweet and savoury and between meat and fish is totally harmonious and the only problem is the relentless progress of the dishes. I did get my emotional boost but Tarquinius was seriously distracted from his duty by the food, a lesson for next time.

Week 61 - NY-Miami-NY-London

 

The New York Winter Antiques Show is a bastion of the New York social scene and the season opener for the local art and antique trade. The East Side House Settlement - which gives residents of the South Bronx and surrounding communities access to quality education and technology training - is the beneficiary, and for 60 years funds have been channeled directly to the charity from the fair. It has, in many ways, established the worldwide principle that antique shows should, at least in part, benefit a charity. To balance the celebration of Mammon, there is a cheque written to help some less fortunate section of society. It is a comfortable exchange, as a good show will commercially benefit the dealers and perhaps give them a sense of a moral uplift as well; and of course, the charity is empowered to do more good work.

Here in New York, everyone is shivering. There have been a couple of fierce storms this winter and piles of grubby snow line the avenues; the wind howls and flurries of ice blow in your face. It is that really cruel cold that tries to steal your breath and each step takes you closer to understanding the travails of Shackleton or Scott. The coat-check at the show is doing brisk business as they charge $3 for each item they take in, and many visitors come with huge collections of winter clothes. Some visitors even end up handing over nearly $20 -the price of an entry ticket! I am mean, however, and have a large bag into which I cram all of my stuff; my coat, my hat, my gloves and my scarf are all unceremoniously squeezed in. The man taking the coats, who has a massive wad of cash in his hand, looks unimpressed by the $3 I part with for my enormously overstuffed and slightly compromised bag.

The show is a celebration of all artistic things American, from folk art through to fine furniture and paintings. There are dealers of international interest but they are a garnish for a show that is proud of its American focus. The format for shows at the Armory, the historic building on Park Avenue with its fabled Tiffany rooms, is always and unchangingly the same. With aisles that go from front to back, there is a cafe at the rear and a bar station in the middle. Shows are formulaic - though some make great play of having special booth designs or black or grey aisles, the net result is always the same. But a show is not about the frame, it is about the picture within it, and whilst some people may get muddled as to which show they are visiting, the objects and pictures in the booths are what they are here to admire and buy.

A number of Masterpiece exhibitors are here and a few potential ones too. The best time to visit is in the last couple of hours when there is a daily unofficial unstructured cocktail party, the visitors are few and the dealers gather to chat and drink. We dubbed it 'Sea Breeze o'clock' when we were doing the show in San Francisco. After a long day standing, your knees and calves aching, a large glass of cranberry and grapefruit juice enhanced by a generous pouring of vodka can seem a life-saving concoction.

Sea Breeze o'clock at the winter show brings a smile to drawn faces: some are bright as business has been done, some are gloomy as they are disappointed. There is a corner of the fair where Elle Shushan, who sells portrait miniatures, Michele Beiny (French porcelain), Robert Young (English folk art), and Sandra Hindman (of Les Enluminures, illuminated manuscripts) all gather. They are a friendly crew and they look out for each other - this is the epitome of the collegiate nature of the trade. There is no competition between them, just a healthy respect for one another's professionalism. Each of these dealers makes a huge effort with his or her stand and the results are universally successful. They are all Masterpiece exhibitors too and there is much talk about the forthcoming fair... but equally the cold outside, hence my eagerness to head off to Miami.

My visit to Miami was punctuated by strange happenings. As I went through security, the large gun-toting guard removed his hat to wipe his head, and inside the hat I spotted a shiny cellophane compartment, holding photographs. I made a comment and he proceeded to show me his family in his hat. What a good place to keep your family, under your hat! I had never imagined I would encounter a real-life version of the phrase.

The second incident was in the street outside my hotel. My son Inigo and I like to play a game where you score a point every time you spot a Mustang. When we are apart, the only way to score is to take and send a photo as proof. So, I spotted a Mustang parked on the main drag, so I whipped out my camera phone and prepared to take a snap. What I had failed to notice was that there was a courting couple inside, in a clinch. The man spotted me trying to take a picture and went ballistic - he jumped out of the car and looked very menacing. I decided to run for it and though he tried to chase, he soon gave up and I caught my breath with his expletives ringing in my ears.

The third unusual encounter came as I walked back to the hotel late at night. Two men, British, wearing smart blue shirts and jeans, both quite tubby and rolling slightly unsteadily along, having possibly imbibed a bit much. Holding hands they were shouting quite loudly: "I am the most gay!" "No," says the other, "I am! I am way more gay than you!" Having failed to reach a consensus on this point, they loudly agreed that they loved each other, politely interrupting their passionate embrace to let me pass. Miami is definitely an intense place, especially around South Beach.

The Original Miami Beach Antique show has over 1000 booths and they cover a mass of space. It is a jewellery show primarily, with almost everything else as well. At Masterpiece we have 16 exhibitors in modern and antique jewellery, representing exactly 10% of the fair - to put it another way 90% is not jewellery. Most of our jewellery exhibitors are here, together with almost every jeweller in the world - this is almost a jewellery convention. For a week or so they trade, barter and talk, it is a very 'full on' environment. I spend many hours running around looking for buying opportunities, and the day passes successfully if expensively.

Back in New York briefly before my flight home early Sunday morning, I catch up with my former colleague Nick and his wife Jamie, and we go to a bar called The Dead Rabbit. This oddly named cocktail bar is in an old house by Bowling Green and serves the most amazing cocktails I think I have ever encountered. They serve the classics and do so with perfect balance and consistency, but they also have created a roster of new ones. I had a 'Gladstone' - composed of whiskey, absinthe, ginger and vermouth, this came in a simple wine glass and was a joy to consume. We had food too, which was cleverly thought out as there were no big plates to get in the way, just delicious snack food, almost like at a cocktail party: oysters of medium size, deliciously sweet and soft, beef sliders, tiny aromatic one-bite lamb chops, crispy fries and succulent tiny morsels of deep fried battered fish. But the cocktails were the stars - even the piano player and our neighbours singing along could not distract us. To inappropriately echo the words of General MacArthur - "I came through and I shall return."

Follow Thomas Woodham Smith on Twitter: www.twitter.com/twoodhamsmith

Week 60 - Battersea and BRAFA Sandwiches and Oysters

 

The walls are painted grey and there is a binary split in the nature of our humble 10 square metre stand. On the left, glittering, fashionable costume jewellery sparkles and shines. On the right, like some retired Colonel standing formally but redundantly, my mahogany and satinwood furniture resides. The fun began on Tuesday, the doors to the Battersea decorative fair were flung open and everyone flocked to Mrs Sungoose's stand. At one point I noted over 25 people huddling avidly and greedily over her display cases. The only visible sign of her being her hand, held high aloft, trying to get a signal for her card-reading machine. She took so many payments the machine had to be left alone for a while to cool down! By the end of the fair, she had sold just under 70 items. My chairs were used like a doctor's waiting room, with the disgruntled having to wait to either pay or try something on. I tried to look keen and enthusiastic but it was hard. I did manage to sell a couple of things but they were hers!

The joy of Battersea is its relaxed attitude. Dogs wander around, sniffing and occasionally chasing each other. Children wander. The side doors are always open and folk wander in and out, chatting, smoking or discussing a sale or a purchase. There is security, but most of all there is trust, it is a very friendly environment, more like being in Canada or Ireland. The stall holders metaphorically leave their front doors open. The food at the fair is provided by Megan, she used to be an antique dealer but changed her shop on the Kings Road into a cafe and has not looked back. Returning some years ago to her native Australia, she returns three times a year to cater for this fair. She brings her team and her engaging family and they keep us all fed with Beetroot cake and slow roasted duck with Savoy cabbage. My neighbour, the always charming William Thuillier, an old master picture dealer who did Masterpiece at the beginning, is kept alive by Megan's culinary enchantments. Opposite I have Callaghan, an energetic much-travelled ambitious Irishman who sells limited edition bronzes of animals and ballerinas. On the other corner we have Marcelline who is a traditional furniture dealer based in the Blanchard Collective. Together we form a motley crew but chatty and positive and kept buoyant by the occasional espresso or glass of Prosecco.

On Wednesday night, I fulfilled a long held dream. I dined at the India Club. On the Strand by Waterloo Bridge just by Somerset House there is an unassuming doorway that leads up to a second floor dining room. This is the India Club. It is just a plain unadorned room of about 12 basic tables: the tops are Formica and the floor has seen better days. This is not luxury, positively the opposite, but I have heard of this place for many years, reported as a wonder of both good value and delicious fresh food. Recalling my swap shop moment in Stow I nipped out to the local Tesco and procured a bottle of their Portuguese Mateous rosé rip off. Commendably cheap, coming from their 'simply' range it was chilled, and, as is traditional, slightly fizzy. It was perfect. We were served with piping hot, brightly seasoned and flavoured, traditional fare. The menu is short and classic but we ate off the scarred and polished silvery metal platters that are the paradigm of such places. We left charged with both nostalgia and food, but equally less money than I have paid for a meal in years.

Thursday morning I cycled off early to St Pancras to catch the train to Brussels in order to see the opening of BRAFA. Though long-established, this fair has recently become a major show on the world fair stage. No longer a parochial event, it draws in exhibitors and visitors from all over Europe, and some from America. Dawn broke as I made my way over the river and the cloudy, cold, but bright London looked particularly fetching. I was travelling with Natalie from the office and Giles from Mallett. The purpose of this visit was to both buy and to visit the fair. There are a number of our current Masterpiece roster and quite a few who would like to talk to us. The train is painlessly quick and before we had time to get bored, we were presenting our vast preview tickets at the door. The ticket was more like a place mat than a ticket, enormous. The entrance to a fair is crucially important, it sets the tone. Here we were confronted with a timber version of a 1960's space station, all curves and bright white, but in strips of wood. The impression I had was as if Robinson Crusoe had been asked to build a rocket ship interior. Passing through into the fair normality returns barring the occasional massive pendant floral ornament.

The fair takes the form of three aisles, and they are very long. It is a long walk down each one, but it is very particular and it gives the fair an identity and a character. I think the challenge of every fair is to create both an environment that is conducive to sales for the exhibitor and an atmosphere which is totally unique. BRAFA achieves this admirably. The fair seems to drive business, it comes at a good time to kick the year off, and it is quintessentially Belgian. I could not define for you what makes it so, but everyone I speak to agrees that it is. We spend 4 hours looking and discussing and make a few small purchases, then head back to the hotel to prepare for dinner.

Giles has damaged his foot and consequently walks carefully with a stick. I have therefore booked my favourite Brussels fish restaurant because it is only a few minutes away. Walking with Giles is an altogether interesting and challenging process. His pace, given the dodgy foot issue, is snail-like. This means that we do not rush and I find that far from being frustratingly slow, it is quite the opposite. Our Papal-slow progression allows for calm and conversation and I find that I look around and reflect on the day and what we are discussing in a smoother and more dignified way. Walking with Giles is rather therapeutic.

Vismet is now firmly established in my mind as one of my favourite places. The wooden interior set on the ground floor of a traditional Flemish gabled house, is instantly comforting. The menu is a photocopied hand-written one and only consists of about a dozen dishes. All the food is prepared visibly in the open kitchen at the back of the room. The chef writes the word 'top' beside his preferred dish each day. I am not sure if it is English or that the word has become seamlessly international. The top dish is always a good choice. A few super fresh really salty oysters, followed by sea bass and accompanied with an icy Alsace wine, allowed us to drift off on a reverie of the day and we made our slow progress back to the hotel content.

Follow Thomas Woodham Smith on Twitter: www.twitter.com/twoodhamsmith

Week 59 - Westward by Road

Back behind the wheel, with my trusty giant Twix nestling in my glove compartment, ready to grant me the benison of its exquisite chocolate, caramel and biscuit melange when a sugar crisis raises its head. Even now, as I guzzle the chocolate stick I cannot resist pretending I am smoking a cigar, something I have never done in real life! An early start delivering a boy to school then I press my Saab into 'd' for drive and we issue forth into the torrential rain. This is my first long run of the year and by my return I will have put 600 miles under my wheels. My soft top Saab has a strange character, as the rain pounds on the roof and splashes on the windscreen I feel as if I am driving a tent, that same sense of being both separate from and part of the weather. I nose out of town slowly on the M4 heading out to Hunterscombe Manor where "The Country Seat" are closing down. The firm were for many years pioneering in the marketing of signed or designed 19th century furniture and decorations. They produced for a few years thoroughly scholarly and innovative catalogues, I still treasure them. Then, when the trade changed post 2008 things went wrong and business faded away to a trickle. The two partners Willy and Harvey have both got health problems. This sorry tale concluded in a sale at Sworders recently and i am off to commiserate and say goodbye as they tidy up and clear out ahead of the sale of their building. Willy is not there but Harvey and his daughter are on site packing and preparing. As I admire the wonderful barn and reminisce with them about good times I cannot stop myself being affected by a wave of melancholy. Two dealers have worked their whole lives and devoted themselves to making a small ripple in the appreciation of their discipline and now it is gone, lotted up and sold. For Forty years Harvey has been studying, buying and displaying his finds. He cannot just stop and he will become one of the many spectres that gather at sales to seek out the mis-catalogued and to connect with former colleagues. He shuffles around, in a curmudgeonly way mourning the lost and unenthusiastic about the future. I buy a small thing out of nostalgia and drag the sodden loose bottomed box through the heavy rain to my car. Out of the drive and off to Calne in Wiltshire.

My next stop is with a living legend. Kevin has been in the trade since Noah sold on the Ark second-hand, and he is steeped in the traditions of the top end of 'volume' selling. He holds swathes of stock, much of it of moderate distinction, but many treasures. My first boss at Mallett, the equally legendary David Nickerson, used to regularly negotiate splendid multi item deals. They would meet and over many packets of cigarettes they would thrash out deals often including 15 or 20 items. I would sit quietly in the background observing the stags locking horns. In my time of being in charge I would do swap deals with Kevin, always aware that he was getting the better of me, but not minding. A few years ago his son came into the business and he has a knack with modern pictures. He is open and boyish and clearly very successful. This team make a stark counterpoint to my morning call and I sit drinking coffee, myriad plans and schemes percolate through the conversational cloud. Kevin does not smoke any more and even for him the stock now moves quite slowly. But even though he is a grandee he has not lost his love of the deal. We walk through everything and I am inspired by several items that offer a potential opportunity.

Back into the rain and as I head further west I am amazed by the unrelenting nature of the flood. Water is everywhere; fields are awash; the roads run like rivers and all around strange reflections throw up light in unexpected ways. I am off to see our Masterpiece exhibitor Edward Hurst. His discrete shed in Coombe Bissett is impossible to find without Satellite Navigation and a great deal of luck. In near total darkness and my low suspension grinding on the uneven road surface i pulled up into his forecourt. No sign, no number, no indication of life at all. He had sent a sub' to show me around and I though I walked through attentively enough, I saw nothing that captured my imagination. The only oddity was talking to his, and my, great friend Tony Fell on the telephone whilst browsing. At Masterpiece, the guys are often to be seen chatting or lunching, they are spiritually in sync when it comes to dealing and luckily they get on well too. One of the most fun dealing days I have ever had was when I went to the Swap shop in Stow-on-the-Wold. Tony and Edward inducted me into the world of barter trading. I arrived with over 50 items and swapped my way into leaving with about 6. No money changed hands and it was a feverish and intense day. Culminating in what Tony calls a 'long swap". That is to say a swap that includes 5 or even 6 swaps to get you what you want. It was terrific and everyone repaired to a drunken cricket match, where I was coerced into humiliating myself with an astonishingly erratic over of bowling followed by an uproarious Indian meal nearby. Sadly, without Edward at his barn there was no magic and I headed back into the night to head for a night in Bristol.

The next morning I head off to North Wraxall to visit Delomosne. They are one of the last dedicated dealers in glass and i was keen to see if they had any new excitements. The rain abated for a few minutes and I pulled in and walked across to their elegant barn. Tim greeted me enthusiastically and we had a lively chat about fairs and their advantages and futures. The struggle for so many dealers is that they need fairs, as the public like them, but the serious buying public only visit the more interesting or glamorous ones. In order to be sufficiently enticing the better fairs spend huge sums on the internal experience from a display and a culinary perspective. Therefore they tend to be quite expensive to exhibit at and that precludes dealers whose stock is not of high value. Those dealers are caught between a rock and a hard place with decreasing local visitors and excluded from the better fairs. It is very tough. But Tim loves glass, and his inventory of fine 18th century drinking glasses, chandeliers and table glass are carefully chosen and displayed.

From Tim I headed off to Stroud to the second discrete shed of my road trip, that of Craig Carrington. I have been buying from Craig for nearly 25 years and he has a clear and precise elegant neo-classical taste. He has a strong following and his shed is a paragon of smart objects, laid out in a cool and clear manner. He has some fine pieces and I am tempted by quite a few things. We carry on the discussion of stock and his potential exhibit at Masterpiece over lunch at Williams Fish Market and Foodhall at 3 Fountain Street Nailsworth Gloucestershire. This is the kind of place that justifies many miles on the road. There is nowhere to park and there are hardly any tables. The tables are basic as is the decor, but the food is magnificent. There are a bevy of charming solicitous older women who bustle around ministering. Sitting in the window at a counter nursing a glass of house white wine I am softened up with a small bowl of spicy crab soup. It warms, tingles and delights in equal measure. Then a plate of buttery soft salt and pepper squid, garnished with a huge bowl of golden brown crunchy crispy chips. To the chagrin of the staff I get a small bowl of tomato ketchup and the rest of the meal dissolves into an uneven medley of tastes. I leave to head home replete with miles, meetings and now transcendent seafood.

Week 58 - Nature and Art

You never know where your next surprise is going to come from. With window rattling winds and torrential rain, cycling around London is not a particularly pleasing prospect. After a couple of days huddling in my car and playing parking-Russian-roulette, I decided to brave the seasonal elements and head off. My brother in law was in the Gurkhas as young man and spent many a night lying on the beach at night waiting for illegal immigrants to land around Hong Kong. He said it was often very wet and miserable lying on the shell beaches. But he learnt, and subsequently told me, that it actually rarely rains continually, even on a really rainy day, it comes in fits and starts. This was my optimistic approach as I headed out into a gap in the seemingly endless squall. The tepid but bright winter sun peaked out from behind the apocalyptic black clouds and I pushed off. After 20 minutes, I had arrived at the office nearly dry. I had sped down to Vauxhall, over Lambeth Bridge, round Smith Square, up by Green Park and then the last push up the hill of St James' and I was chaining up my bike. The rain had held off, and as I threaded my way through these beautiful parts of London, I felt once again the joy and the delight of being free, roaming in our wonderful city. However, there was one fly in the ointment. I had chosen to ride my Leader 725, which is lightweight, fast and responsive, as I imagine a fine horse would be. The down-side of this fine steed is that it has no mudguards. Given the amount of water on the road, and the Cumbrian lakes of puddles that punctuate the streets, I got very precisely wet from my bottom up to my neck in a straight line of spray up my spine. My front and sides were warm, almost toasty from my energies, but I had this exquisite line of freezing cold and dripping wet. Never mind.

I went to a pub in Masbro Road in Hammersmith called the Havelock Tavern to meet with my assistant and my accountant. It has big windows and is on a corner so it makes a great winter location when we are keen for any light. It has made a speciality of simple, carefully made, robust food. As we discussed my chaos and half-baked plans, we consumed salmon, beef and chicken, all of which were good enough to distract us from our conversation without inspiring us to rave or take pictures. It is funny the way meals can be like that; good, worthy, nourishing meals that nonetheless are neither bad nor good, just 'fine'. It sounds as if I am being a trifle dismissive here but actually this sort of nourishment gives great comfort. You feel cosseted without having to pay much attention to what you are actually eating. My ex-boss at Mallett once called our in-house cook into the Mallett dining room. He was not a great foodie but he had enjoyed his lunch greatly. "Catherine", he said, "that was delicious, it didn't taste of anything!" Naturally, she was quite crestfallen thinking he had called her in to carry out some sort of cruel practical joke. But, truthfully, he had tried to compliment. He meant that the food was 'fine' and that it had all been delicious and nothing had tasted 'too' anything. The perfect culinary harmony she had achieved had rendered it invisible, which in the context of a working lunch is altogether good. This was the case at the Havelock, but I did not repeat his compliment.

I drove down to Dorset to visit the artist Simon Gudgeon. He has created an amazing aquatic sculpture park. Some years ago he bought a struggling fish farm and has redeveloped it into a wonderful and surprising walk of figurative and abstract sculpture. Many works play with reflections and are nuanced and moved by changes in light and wind. Simon and his wife are both gardeners and dog lovers in probably equal measure. Their house and gardens are immaculate and each piece is beautifully located and planted around. There is a strong Japanese aesthetic at work, visible in the detail, the finishes, the surfaces and even in the broader arrangements. Simon is a precise man with a determined and ambitious drive that makes him the success he is, but also seems to encourage him to be brave and creative too. He seems to be coming up with new ideas and concepts for work on a daily basis. I was particularly struck by the remote control helicopter he had built in order to take aerial pictures of his park and works. Around the property his dogs roamed in confident disorder, each an interesting breed, glossily healthy and cheerful.

He is keen to do something with us at Masterpiece and the challenge is to find a way of incorporating his work into our show in a way that is both beneficial and appropriate to both parties. We will need to think hard, as the work is outside our normal style but he is full of creativity and drive. In addition to his lakes, the local countryside is awash, temporary lakes abound and the pub at which we ate lunch was practically afloat. As we ate our fishcakes and crab tarts, washed down with fizzy water, I could practically hear Simon's mind crackling with energy as he discussed his plans for the next few months. As I drove away, I felt very enthused by this artist who has made this private park but looks out via the internet and connections to the whole world.

Every time I walk along the Quai Voltaire I pass the shop of Guy Ladrière. I have never been in, embarrassingly. I stare at the window and I presume, as I press my nose to the glass, that I won't be able to afford anything. For 10 years Benjamin Proust was residing on the other side of the glass, but he is now an independent sculpture dealer and has a showroom in Bond St almost opposite where Mallett were for many years. I never knew there was a gallery there. As I look back on my 25 Mallett years, I increasingly conclude that I worked in a sort of bubble, strangely unaware of the world beyond our showrooms and suppliers. Benjamin has been in the business for 20 years and I have really hardly met him. We met once, at the Christies box at Chelsea football club, but that is all. Here is someone, highly respected and with long experience, that I have only just got to know, and I so easily could have done so before, both in Paris and in London.

He is one of those vertical people. Tall and incredibly skinny with that trendy beard which is a cross between being unshaven and an actual beard, 'manly stubble'. He has very much the current fashionable look. But he is infectiously friendly and enthusiastic. His art is sculpture and he buys eclectically and shows his work in a creative and clean, modern way. He is not pretentious but the look is very cool. I asked him whether he was a relative of Marcel Proust, the author. He answers that it is possible, but not definite, but he does say that he has a relative called Madeleine Proust, which is perfect! She became so by marrying into the family, consequently it is a total accident that she is named after the inspiration for the great author's fictionalised memoire.

In Dorset I was struck by the bright sun shining on the water everywhere, the trees and bushes are leafless and everything seems very dead and wintery. But I stopped and looked a bit closer and those dead looking branches are full of buds. Life is lurking, building up strength to burst out again come a clement moment. I know this is a fact known to most, but I am an ardent habitual town dweller and this dormant life is a discovery. I found it most inspiring and thought perhaps the New Year is a good time to make resolutions after all, ones that need to build up strength before they burst onto the scene in the Spring.

Follow Thomas Woodham Smith on Twitter: www.twitter.com/twoodhamsmith

Week 57 - New Year and Resolutions

Leaving the warmth of Aqaba in the south of Jordan and driving up Highway 15 for three and a half hours towards Amman in a minibus piloted by a fresh-faced boy wearing a scarf, a beanie and sunglasses, provided a surreal new version of the expectation which New Year's Eve usually engenders. He spoke very little English but had a recurring mantra - You need toilet?' These potential stops coincided with the periodic appearance of a warehouse offering Dead Sea beauty products, mosaic-decorated objects or miscellaneous stuff with Jordan logos. We declined to his increasing chagrin - obviously his commission or just a break from our chatter being denied him. Arriving at the Le Meridien back in Amman we were swept through the security scanners. Every hotel has an airport-like scanner and accompanying conveyor belt which you have to pass through each time you enter and place your treasures on the belt. Smuggling booze into the hotel and having it security checked is an exquisite embarrassment. There is also the Kafkesque Tourist Police, ever-present, sporting their military uniforms and pistols. I have often wondered at the absence of Tourist Police elsewhere as travellers often misbehave, or say annoying or stupid things loudly about the art they are in front of, and an arrest and a few days in a tourist jail might well be remedial. But apparently that's not their particular role.

After security, we were offered the New Year's Eve entertainment opportunity of yet another buffet followed by belly dancing. All of this was available at two prices, one without alcohol and the other with 'limited' alcohol. The word 'limited' put off the younger members of our party, and our group enthusiasm for buffets had waned considerably over the past 10 days, so we decided to make our own party later by repairing, after dinner, to one of our rooms. In the interim, we dined at an International chain in the hotel, a Benihana - we had loved all our grilled meats, salads and hummus but the mood was for variety. The theme of the restaurant is Japanese and the chef comes to the table and larks about with sharp knives as he prepares your grilled meats and salads. Though fun to watch and eat as the chef crashed about, we were all struck by the fact that we had swapped like for like. No hummus though. At our impromptu house party we sang songs, told jokes and drank hideous, overpriced and warm sparkling wine purchased from the liquor store outside the hotel. We welcomed in the year via a laptop countdown which was slightly messed up as we logged on to UK time forgetting that it was only 10pm there, whilst we were two hours ahead in Jordan.

The New Year brought a delayed, painful, squashed, and bumpy flight back to London at the very back of the plane, and it was as weary travellers that we arrived at home. London was awash and icy winds cut through us; we shivered as we unpacked in our warm, centrally-heated, but emphatically not Jordanian, home. Our suitcases were full of sand and dirty clothes, our minds far from revelry. In fact, baths and early to bed seemed the order of the day.

A short working week of only a couple of days, and what was more, most offices still seemed closed with staff taking a full fortnight for the holiday. Masterpiece was like the Marie Celeste. Various computers were flickering with activity but this was taking place from elsewhere. Those who had work to do were performing it from home and so the ship was being successfully steered, but remotely, apparently by ghosts.

I had two important tasks to carry out: one was to find an exhibitor's missing book, and the other was to overcome yet another iphone issue. I failed in both as, one way or another, domestic house-keeping, took up all my time. But cycling fruitlessly around London gave me an opportunity to reflect on the year to come.

For those of us in the art fair world, the first event is BRAFA in Brussels, which has become one of most important European fairs apart from TEFAF. After that, there is the NY Winter Show, and then events in Miami and Palm Beach race on, back to back. Suddenly we are half way through February and preparations begin for TEFAF itself. The first 3 months of the year are frantically busy as, at Masterpiece, we are allocating the last few stands and balancing the aisles so as to keep the versatility and eclecticism that is our trademark. The next stage can then begin - the process of coaxing designs and novel promotional material out of our exhibitors. With all the noise this generates, it is often hard to find time to consider how we could do all of this better, or even differently. On my bike I did not discover anything or invent a new strategy, but I did have a chance to ruminate.

Mainly, I thought about resolutions for this New Year. The usual round of things: more exercise, less booze, eating in greater moderation, more early nights - all those things that you might call the 'usual suspects'- raised their ugly predictable heads. But I tried to be a bit more creative. It is an amazing thing that the New Year manages to bring on this rash of thoughts. It is mid-winter, it is cold and miserable - and yet it is the moment when people look to review themselves. It feels as though it should be in the spring that these thoughts emerge - as fresh buds appear and the days extend, then we should be creative. I would like to learn more, to get myself some deeper knowledge about something. Our exhibitors are such a rich panoply of types who bring an extraordinary and indefinable mix of personalities into one space for a week in summer. I really should know them all better, but at the moment stand C22 occupies my mind. I think I will postpone creativity for a while.

Week 56 - Christmas in Jordan

Jordan looks on the map like a skinny student in a cagoule carrying a massive rucksack. The thought bubble above his head is the Sea of Galilee and his toes dip into the Red Sea. His rucksack is the Eastern desert. Jordan, officially The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, also appears to be standing in a very crowded railway carriage, with Iraq and Syria to the North, and Saudi Arabia and Egypt to the south; not forgetting Palestine, Israel and nearby Lebanon. Our guide described Jordan as a quiet family with noisy neighbours. A young country, only created in 1946, it was fashioned out of the land that gave us ancient history. The Middle East gave us our first ancient cities, some of our earliest cattle and possibly some of our crucial domestic crops - the evocatively named Fertile Crescent. Without wanting to drift into an area of expertise where I have none, the land Jordan occupies could not be more suffused with antiquity.

Today Jordan has become a safe haven, a sanctuary. At its birth in 1946, the state had a population of 400,000, of which a quarter were nomads. Today, the population is in excess of 6 million. The near absolute rule of kings Hussein and now Abdullah II have fashioned a tolerant, stable and broadly secular state, which is a magnet to the wars and religious refugees of the region. Most incomers live in the North around Amman, but Aqaba in the south is a thriving busy port and business centre.

We arrived in Jordan late at night and in darkness found ourselves at our hotel amid clouds of cigarette smoke. It is amazing how used to the smoke -free world I am. Around midnight, sitting in the lobby, eating hummus with warm pitta bread and drinking Turkish medium sweet coffee (an exquisite drink made from finely ground coffee flavoured with rosewater and cardamom, which delivers caffeine, exotic flavour and a mouthful of grit at the bottom of every cup) amidst a haze of blue grey smoke, we were immersed from the start in a sense of truly being somewhere else. I forget how familiar the countries I visit for work are. Here in Jordan, I am really abroad, and that fact is even more stimulating than the coffee.

We have two noble guardians, our guide Sohaib and our coach driver Ismael. Sohaib is 28, wears faded jeans, a faded blue baseball cap, is trendily unshaven and has a keen, lively expression. A cigarette perches permanently on his lower lip. He proudly and with a broad smile informs me that 85% of the population smokes. I can't help asking whether he worries about cancer, and his repost is that we live in perilous times - cancer is just not at the top of the worry list. He travels in Europe during the summer and takes tourists around his own country from September to May. His parents moved to Jordan and he was born here, studied hard and got the travel bug. He works in order to feed his wanderlust. I wonder whether he has nomad genes, but I don't ask.

Ismael is in his 60s and is not tall. He loves the little bus in which he drives us about; the windows gleam as does the body, not a scratch on any part. He is similarly immaculate, in bright white shirt and dark tank top, his neatly cut hair somehow echoed by his crisply pressed trousers. He smiles. He bestows a benign aura. With Ismael at the wheel, nothing bad could happen. Jordan's roads seem to combine carpet-like smoothness with winding awkward narrowness in equal measure. The country has got an extreme case of speed bumps. Some road transport guru has proclaimed that every road should have randomly placed expressions of this so-called 'traffic calming' method; they are even on the motorways! But Ismael navigates these with a sort of 6th sense. They appear without warning and though we bounce, we do so with as little disturbance as is possible. With these two conducting u,s we are transported and educated wonderfully.

The biblical sites of Jordan jostle for prominence with the Roman, the Byzantine, the Nabatean, the Crusader, the Mamluk, the Abbasid, etc. The country is crammed full of places to see and from which to learn. We are only here for a week and it is impossible to see it all. The most famous sites are broadly covered but the overriding sense is that we are having a cultural appetiser. Just being here is the most powerful memory in the making. We are duly impressed by the cultural riches, but the country and its people are the greatest daily pleasure. Everyone is helpful, obliging and charming. We bought a pair of sunglasses, with a young boy no more than 10 years old was as our salesman. He begun by putting his hand on my shoulder, and, as he was about 4ft tall and I am 6, that was a stretch to start with. He shook my hand vigorously: "my friend, how can I help you?" We negotiated and made a purchase, all accomplished with smiles and good humour. I would have happily paid the asking price just for the joy of the encounter. However I did haggle and though I definitely overpaid, I was thrilled to hand over my cash in the end. Drinking coffee or the equally delicious immersion of lemon juice sweetened and heaped with finely chopped fresh mint is not in the guide book. Beside the road, we eat freshly-grilled meat wrapped in flatbread, the meat juices softening and flavouring the bread, surrounded by tea-drinking card players, all smoking, and many using water pipes. These are experiences that you cannot quantify in terms of how much they broaden and enlighten. Along the roads we see garden centres where the trees and shrubs are nurtured in recycled olive oil tins, these colourful boxes providing a beautiful contrast to the grey-green plants.

From the coach we look out at the tiers of white block-like houses that populate the cities and towns and feel we could be in any age. In the towns, there are many shops that are simply boxes with a metal grille at the front that is pulled down when they close. At many of the Roman sites, the cardos, or shopping streets, have shops which operated in exactly the same way. I keep feeling a strange ripple of time as if nothing has actually changed for 2000 years. At one site there was a trader seated, calling out to visitors offering 'memory cards, cameras, and batteries'. His little wooden folding stand and his whole demeanour was totally timeless. As he sat in a Roman forum I found it hard seeing him as being of our age, rather that of the surrounding monuments ,yet his offering could not have been more contemporary.

Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day merge together. As we stand in front of the Temple of Artemis at Jerash, the question is 'what day is it?' Is it Tuesday? Is it Christmas Eve? If the hotels know, they remorselessly play Michael Bublé singing 'White Christmas' counterpointed with Arabic music. The contrast eloquently expresses the peculiarity of our situation. There is a Christmas tree in the restaurant as we tuck in to our Fattoush, a chopped salad of tomatoes and lettuce with crunchy pieces of deep fried pitta bread, made sharp with lemon juice and sumac; followed by freshly grilled Red and King Fish, whose deaths I decreed as they swam in a nearby tank. We have Father Christmas placemats, but there it ends. There are a few Christians in Jordan - after all this is where it all began. The guide book helpfully points out that there have been Christians in Jordan, 'since the crucifixion' but today they represent less than 10% of the population.

Yesterday we went to Wadi Rum, a desert valley. We arrived and were transferred to ancient rusty open-backed 4x4 trucks, each with bench seats upholstered in local Bedouin fabric, in which we drove off onto the hard stony sand. Quickly we forgot the visitor centre and moved in total silence amid a strange family of giant rocks. This was the bottom of the ocean and the giants are harder stones that have been left, surviving millions of years as the sands and time wear everything else away. They look like battered survivors too, each wind-blown and soft. We stopped beside the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the mountain that resembles a cluster of columns which gave the title to T. E. Lawrence's memoir of the Arab revolt, written in 1922. Later we saw a rough carving of Lawrence done in 1917 as he rushed through on his way to Damascus. Not surprisingly, the film 'Lawrence of Arabia' was filmed here. For us it felt as if we were in a magnificent cathedral. The reverential hush pervaded and we all felt like being quiet. The sand dunes whispered in the wind and the only interruption was the grind of truculent gears and the strange bellowing of camels. We drank tea in a Bedouin tent and reflected on the last week. Here we are in the desert, capturing in microcosm the history of this nation from its pre-history through to today, via the residue of the Arab revolt. There is an inspiring energy to this nation. At every site we visit, new aspects are being discovered and revealed. The population is growing and, though the economy is fragile, there is construction everywhere. Many buildings are topped with steel tendrils that reach up to the sky, optimistically waiting for a further storey when time or money allows. This is a physical manifestation of this country's hope for the future. I am inspired by my visit and feel humbled by the achievement of nation-building that we have been privileged to witness.

Follow Thomas Woodham Smith on Twitter: www.twitter.com/twoodhamsmith

week 55 - Christmas Parties

It is often said of me that I wear a number of different hats when it comes to earning a living. Though the hat swapping can be sometimes confusing to others, and even to myself, in that I never quite know which one I am wearing at any given moment, it does have some advantages. At Christmas in particular, I really enjoy my multiple bonnets. The reason is that I get invited as a guest to a number of parties. I don't quite belong to any one group, but I am attached to many, and am only too happy to give each party my full attention.

The festive season began with the Masterpiece party. Getting away from the West End of London we gathered at the home of our leader Nazy, who plied us with Ruinart whilst her daughter amused us with tales of rivalries at school. We nibbled as we opened our Secret Santa presents. This is a great system for offices where each employee only has to buy one gift, and no one knows who is their donor. It works well and everyone has the fun of guessing who gave what. Then dinner at a local hostelry, all great fun and not too much talk of Masterpiece. The evening was gentle and started the season off well. We had a slight tinge of melancholy as our team has changed, with our brilliant vetting coordinator Bess heading off, newly wed, to live back in her home nation of the USA. Her fellow compatriot Elizabeth, who helped me get the fair going in its earliest days, has also moved on, in her case to the Masterpiece PR team at Gong Muse. But it was melancholy tinged with excitement, as both are raring to go in their new lives. Masterpiece is growing and developing and we had to have some staff changes; it was remarkable that we had such a stable team in these first 5 years.

Then Mallett had its evening and we all dressed in black tie. I had planned to cycle over but the wind was blowing hard and rain was trying to add to the gruesomeness, so I lost my nerve and set off on the underground with the Princess of Nebraska, one of the key talents at Hatfields, the restoration business. We discussed the possibilities of mayhem. The Mallett party has been legendary over the last few years for good fellowship and an entertaining mix of guests. The senior board directors sit alongside the van drivers and secretaries, and everyone gets on fine. Occasionally there is a memorably amusing distraction, but mainly it passes with decorum and civilisation, more is the pity. Giles, the CEO, has made a tradition of doing a quiz, ably assisted by my colleague Francesca. This always causes a lot of shouting and cheating and this year was no exception with many guests crying foul. But it all ended happily and we moved on to a very silly game where you have to pick up a box with your teeth without touching the ground with any other part of your body, other than your feet. The more competitive members of the team got into this with a little too much gusto; in parallel, a couple of the girls were so supple that they could do it without even trying. The old men struggled and some triumphed as others fell by the wayside. The girls won easily.

Then a detour from Christmas excess. A friend has found a red lacquer cabinet on stand and, as we are both going away for Christmas and New Year, I decide to run down to the country to see it. We meet at the station, which is a miracle as he is always late. He has been around the business forever and though he finds the most marvellous, unseen, things, he is not the most reliable in terms of time keeping. With most people I know, it would be irritating how late he is; with him it is almost loveable. He gets incredibly involved in all that he does and there is never enough time for all his passion and intense focus. The next thing just has to wait. It is a bit tough if you are the next thing, but it is wonderful if you are the current thing. We drive to his house and look at the cabinet. It is, as anticipated, very interesting. It has a red lacquer exterior and a black lacquer interior. I have seen this kind of thing before but it is very rare. The boring thing is that it has big splits in the doors. I am too afraid of the restoration to pursue it. He is not bothered and he pours me a glass of Champagne. Never was a difficult moment so elegantly and charmingly overcome. He remembers everything and I forget everything. I had made some casual promise which I had now failed to fulfil. He took it well and though I know he will remember, I think he will forgive me, as we want to do business again. The Champagne was followed by the most delicious repast, string cut root vegetables roasted to crispness in the Aga, accompanied by the most succulent partridge I had ever had. He split them and covered with oil and salt, a tiny browning in a hot pan and then into the oven for seemingly no time at all. To accompany, we had quartered Brussels sprouts with lardons cooked in stock. A delicious Aga-warmed bottle of Crôzes-Hermitage went down all too easily alongside, the dusty bottle a perfect moment in this house of perfect dusty moments. A tiny piece of perfect creamy stingingly-strong stilton finished us off. I went to bed replete and forgiven for not buying when I had promised to; the early train was waiting as we arrived at the station and my fleeting country run came to an end.

Back in town, I pay a swift visit to Thomas Dane who provides me with coffee, chocolate, iphone charger and wifi, before a brief discussion. Refuelled and ready for action I head down to Clapham for the Hatfields Christmas event. Another quiz, lots of jokes and teasing, another festival of rich food and even more booze. Swaying slightly, I venture to the neighbors', more drink, more snacks. Then dinner with further neighbours. Exhausted by excessive jollity, late at night, I complete my packing.

Sunday dawns and after a punitive hour or so in the gym with my scarily fit and strong oldest son, the whole family head off for our Christmas and New Year adventure. The airport provided its usual social humiliations. The holes in my socks being the least of a bad bunch. Then we were on board and 5 hours later we landed in Jordan for 10 days of material and social culture. The brand new airport beckoned us and we knew we were in a totally new and yet totally ancient world.

Week 54 - Sorrolla

 

Air travel is supposed to be a thrill and a delight. The limousine to the airport, followed by seamless check-in, your bags carried through security by helpful and obliging staff. A light snack as a pause before boarding, then sit back in your broad comfortable seat. All that remains before take-off is to peruse the in-flight entertainment, sipping champagne, in the almost church like silence around. The flight passes and you disembark, your bags again carried through to the car waiting to swish you into the city and your beckoning hotel.

Then you actually wake up! It is 6.30 in the morning; Mrs Sungoose does not want to be awakened so you quietly fumble around trying to find the last few things you need, then trudge in heavy rain to the underground. Battered and clattered, shoved and trodden on, you arrive at the airport to stand at the back of a check-in line. Not being having been able to print the boarding pass means that you have to wait while your fellow travellers wrestle what appears to be their entire households in monumental suitcases along the queue and onto the scales where they fight futile battles to avoid surcharges for shipping the family anvil back to Spain in their hand baggage. Once checked-in the long queue for security awaits, followed by the long queue for passports, followed by the long queue to show your boarding pass, followed by the long queue to actually get on the plane. Aboard your knees are scraped and you can hardly breathe out your neighbours are so close. But two and half hours later you are squeezed out like a slow birth and you can actually begin the pleasure and adventure of being abroad.

Madrid is one of the great European capital cities. I have been coming here since I was at university. However, my visit frequency dramatically increased when my friend Laura moved here 17 years ago. She suggested that I attend the Feriarte which is still the best Spanish annual antique fair. I followed her advice and I have since made friends with several of the dealers and consequently find it highly productive to come several times a year. Sitting with Laura in the hotel bar, we reminisce as I order cava for her and a vodka and tonic for myself. The waitress comes over to our table apologetically, saying that they have run out of cava and would Laura accept a glass of real champagne, Pommery, instead, for the same price. She generously accepts. They bring it along with a huge bucket of ice. It turns out the bucket is in fact my glass, and into it they tip half a bottle of Ciroc vodka and a splash of tonic. This is quite honestly the most enormous drink I think I have ever been poured. I don't so much drink it as take a swim in it.

Laura, since leaving London with no command of Spanish at all, has become one of the foremost translators in the art world. She is constantly immersed in museum and gallery work and she could work 24 hours a day; she sometimes does. But she has taken time out from her computer to dine with me. We talk about our friends in the business, who all seem to be changing or moving their careers. We talk about Masterpiece and what she hears about the fair from several of her galleries. She is often amused to hear gossip, not letting on that she knows someone on the inside of the organisation. But most of all we talk about how Spain has suffered since the economic downturn of 2008. The local trade has been adversely hit and she is very worried about the future. The economy has affected other industries far worse than the art world. In Spain youth unemployment is at record levels, and in certain parts of the country it has reached over 50%. Spain is really suffering.

We dine in one of my favourite places. Comma El Puchero. In the half-basement, the 10 or so tables have their familiar red and white check tablecloths and red pottery decoration. The waiter is a bit frosty until he drops a fork. He then giggles and though he is grizzled, gravel-voiced and 70 odd years old, he flutters around our table and looks after us with charm, wit, generosity and grace. Crispy brown chicken croquettes with arrestingly soft, smooth, creamy interiors and Morcilla black pudding arrive. Spanish black pudding is wonderful; it has rice in it hugely enhances the flavours as well as giving the meat an almost nutty, chewy quality. Both dishes come with fine straw chips - indeed the presentation is as if each dish were coming in a basket filled with straw. The chips are really crisp and sharp with salt, and you can taste the oil in which they were fried. This perfect beginning is followed by a dish of exquisite tiny kidneys presented in an aromatic rich stock gravy. The dish is complemented by tiny wild mushrooms giving extra flavour and a delicate bite alongside the soft buttery kidneys. The house Rioja helps too, being both light and strong in tannin which helps cut through the richness. In Spain everyone eats late and it is a real challenge to be the last to leave the restaurant, but we manage it.

The following day I speed with my friend Antonio around the dealers and the auction houses. There are very few dealers who now actually have shops so we spend half the day jumping in and out of taxis as we criss-cross the city. At each destination, he makes a call and we are led up a staircase into a warehouse space. Everything is tucked away. Despite a bewildering number of visits, the best is always in Antonio's own warehouse. He has an amazingly eclectic eye, loving everything from South American 17th century ivory figures to contemporary art and design, and really everything in between as well. He shuffles along rubbing his short gray hair, either smoking or randomly ruminating like a thoughtful cow. He usually wears an indeterminate pair of squishy shapeless shoes. Today he decided to dress up for me and has put on his suede brogues. They look sparklingly new, though he admits he has owned them for 15 years. This is only their 4th outing. They are clearly staggeringly uncomfortable, as he shuffles along in a more pained than the usual way. At his warehouse, he reveals a fabulous black and red lacquer cabinet on stand and a Neoclassical giltwood mirror, both items way better than anything we have seen on our laborious travels in the city. We repair to a local tapas bar and plan his next move. He needs to save money to buy a flat. But every time he has money, he buys an object or a painting. It is his addiction. But the wonderful thing is that though he buys all the time, he almost never buys badly.

Before leaving Madrid I decide to take a visit to the Sorolla Museum; the beautiful private house built by the artist himself. It was his studio, showroom and home. Today it retains his objects, his sketches and a good selection of his work, particularly portraits of his family. Though the paintings are charming and he was clearly a great talent, the real joy of the place is the space itself. Sorolla created the ultimate house for parties, with big airy rooms interconnecting, full of visual curiosity. In particular the dining room, painted with bright floral swags and his female family members seemingly pinning them up. As you turn a corner, you can look through to other rooms, or see the garden or across the courtyard. I wander around delighting in the tiny formal garden with its paths and benches inset with tiles and the fountains playing in a way reminiscent of the Moorish parts of southern Spain. It was a truly restful quiet moment to brace myself for the hurly burly of the flight home.