Week 106 - Buzz Buzz Buzz Go the Art Fairs

Buzz buzz buzz. 

The fairs are in full swing in London, The Olympia Fine Art and Antiques Fair opens on the 18th June and Masterpiece opens a few days later on the 24th. Like industrious worker bees everyone is madly working away. Each dealer has a few precious clients akin to the Queen Bees all the drones strive for. Or so I imagine the clients. The metaphor continues as the old regular clients/queen bees have to be attended to with care and love but every season a new client/queen takes off and some of the workers leave while some stay loyally with the old queen. 

A swarm of Bees in Sussex - a metaphor for the trade ( image writer's own )

We drones - the dealers - gather our belongings together hoping to please both our existing clients and tempt new ones. To achieve this we exhibit at these fairs. 

But it is the lead up to the show that excites almost as much as the fair itself. This year I am exhibiting at Olympia. As a dealer I am too junior to exhibit on the grand stage of Masterpiece, even though I founded it. My offerings are quite humble - though, of course, fabulous. I have taken a large stand and everything, over 200 lots, has to be made ready. 

To our clients we may act as drones but we are the queens to our restorers and helpers. At Hatfields restoration in South London they crack the whip on upholsterers, electricians, metalworkers, cabinetmakers, polishers, framers and glass workers. All work feverishly to get things ready. Decisions are made hourly about a particular finish or button or repair. The hive is throbbing. What is so intoxicating about this phase is how much everyone cares beyond the requirement of mere work. The man who specializes in wiring antique light fixings sits hunched over a chandelier, he is big man - keen on rugby - or so says his t-shirt. His large sausagey fingers are fighting to wire on the last glass drops. Jerry also a large man whose hands never lose a polychromy of polish and wood stain sweats over an Art Deco chest to engender the right richness of tone. Phil who looks like a young Edward VII with a full beard, works hard to get the perfect match for a piece of missing veneer. These are but a few of those who really want to do the best they can.

Mirrors waiting in turn patiently, ( image writer's own )

But that is not all, I have three artists with whom I am working who are spraying, nailing, bending and wiring. Here I am uncertain who is the queen and who is the drone. But for Ben who is an immaculate fair haired ultra technician who is fashioning from wire a lion's head for me at Olympia or Marcus the bespectacled Caractacus Potts of art electrics who from NY is twisting copper into flowers or Simon who is adjusting from his Somerset studio, sweeping his long grey hair from his eyes, his video piece of a breathing rock. I am buzzing around them or vice versa? 

In a Dunkirk spirit all manner of vehicles convey precious cargo to temporary homes in tents and buildings around town. The vans gather and young men without bad backs load and sweat, load and sweat. Jamie with his head of curly black hair carries a marble top under one arm. I struggle to move it. Orlando, sweat beading from his brow and his armpit carries a vast sofa on his head. We then spend days planning and executing our stand display. Drills and hammers sing their traditional summer songs as this is enacted. Picture hanging with tremendous care and furniture moved one half inch to the left or right. Then comes vetting, figures academically and jealously hunch over everything to dispute and proclaim on the legitimacy of every morsel. This is followed by fevered rearrangement and then readiness for the public. 

A exhibition stand in play, ( image writer's own )

Preview day at Masterpiece is a lavish affair beginning with coffee and cakes and ending with champagne and canapés. Olympia has no such delights. But both days are well attended with enthusiasts, buyers and trade hangers on. The principle that Masterpiece is for the great and very valuable and Olympia is more reasonably priced and less serious is definitely most peoples understanding. As the days pass we will see who comes from our home shores, from America and from Europe. Hopefully all visitors will find delights to tempt them at every level of collecting.

The Internet crackles with gallery openings and invitations to the fairs. Lists of delightful and hopefully tempting treasures pop into the inbox or flop through the letterbox. 

This is London in June. It is an amazing month. Buzz, Buzz, Buzz

Week 105 - The Arts Lane Needs Europe

I am British, I love my nation but I look out not in. I live in the Oval in London. I live near the tube - I love it when the tannoy says: "this station is oval". I am also served by a myriad of bus routes. From my home I can be at almost any major train station within half an hour and within an hour at all the London airports. I also drive and in an hour and a half I am at the Eurotunnel, from there the whole of Europe is but a few further hours away. This is all necessary to me as I am an antique dealer, I need to travel and I need to travel far and wide.

My sons are respectively a musician and an artist. The musician seems to find it convenient for me to travel back from nearly everywhere I travel carrying heavy and fragile recording equipment that he has bought on the internet. My other son sees the artistic world through spectacles fashioned from all periods of creativity and all countries. His body is in London and that colours his experience but his mind roams the four corners of the world looking for inspiration. They need the wider world too.

Just a few weeks ago there was a general election in Britain and the result was that the Conservatives won a full overall majority and are in power on their own for the first time in 18 years. Their majority is slim; in 1992 the Conservatives also won but they saw their majority dwindle over their term of office and they crumbled to inertia. The future is uncertain for them despite their success. 

They have been elected in part because they have committed to holding a referendum on whether Britain should stay as part of the European Union. For anyone in my business that is a crucial issue and one that threatens the centrality of London to the art trade. Politicians seem not to rate the importance of the art business. It is perceived to be intellectually and financially elitist and therefore the preserve of a privileged few. As such no politician hoping to garner the popularity of the masses can afford to be seen to be endorsing or supporting it. However I am in it and I survive because of it. I pay my bills because I buy and sell. I need Europe to be both an accessible and friendly market to sell to and to buy from. My friend Sylvain in Paris who has one of the most elegant shops on the Quai Voltaire is exquisitely French. He dresses immaculately and treats everyone with charm and discretion. Grey haired and small of stature he fights every day to buy and to sell internationally. My friend Marcus in Munich does much the same thing, or Paul in Belgium, Antonio in Madrid or Michael in Copenhagen - these are all successful people and I suppose they deserve no ones sympathy, but they work every day at their jobs doing their best and it is essential for them to trade across borders. They are all good citizens with one eye focused at home and another abroad; we are all the same.

European Union expressed through mushrooms, photograph writer's own

I love to eat in restaurants and I strongly feel that the activity of eating out with ones professional colleagues is one of the best bonds one can forge. A meal enjoyed creates a memory that the deal that precedes or follows it simply does not. You build trust. Europe isn't just about trade it is about the relationships you forge. If you travel to a country and try to immerse yourself in its culture you become sympathetic to it. In my travels I have found that I have become a European. There is hardly a country where I have not forged friendships and made purchases. We think globally but eat, buy and sell locally.

Week 104- Come Rain or Shine

Once again finding myself amid the hurly-burly of the confluence of fairs at Montpellier, Avignon and Beziers, I was encouraged to observe how current tastes and fashion intersect with the antiques world. These fairs take place four times a year and whilst some traders take stands at all three, the number of dealers you see nonetheless amounts to over 2000. If ever there was a barometer of the trade and current trends it is here. 

It began badly in driving rain. The Languedoc in southern France is one of the most popular holiday destinations because the weather is so marvellous. Arriving from almost anywhere in cold northern Europe, after a couple of claustrophobic hours held at the mercy of one of the discount flight operators you can slip out of your thermals into shorts and t-shirts - and bathe in warm Provencal colours and red wine to match. Dealers come to buy but also to have a little holiday. Though the trading day begins at 8 it is all over by midday at the latest, so the remains of the day and the night are there to be sybaritically consumed. The dealers come in two flavours - specialists and generalists. The former steam round covering the miles of stalls: eagle-eyed they pounce and move on. Often they have finished by 9 or 9.30. The others have to cover anything and everything; therefore they need to proceed at a thorough and gentle pace. Without fail the specialists end their trawl full of complaints, they have missed something or they have been asked too much money. Such is their pain. The others have their own problems. The fair opens to one and all at 8am - the dealers as well as the buyers. This means that not everything is unpacked from the vans as you enter. You need to go slowly and you need to go round each pavilion several times. Inevitably the generalist also moans about missed chances but it happens later in the day. So I am lucky to enjoy the full range of emotions, since I am travelling with two diehard carpet dealers, and keep bumping into an enthusiastic general dealer from Pimlico. Beziers was awash and after 10 minutes I gave up and repaired to my car to attempt to dry out, having bought nothing, barely able to see what was on offer through the downpour. The carpet guys are really called Owen and Michael but they are known to each other and their friends as Lucky (Mike) and (Owen) the Pirate. Later, drenched, they tell me reluctantly that they had to reject a rug because it was impossible to lift it out of the rain and mud. My other friend Christopher - is soaking, but I see him scuttling backwards and forwards from his hire car with an array of eclectic oddities. Despite the deluge, or maybe even because of it, his buying is thriving.

Giving up we head to Avignon and finer weather. En route we have an extended luncheon detour to the fabulously named Palavas-les-Flots. Overlooking the beach, beyond which- kite surfers strut their stuff in the gales; L'Escale offered us elegantly presented sweet Bouzigues oysters and a grilled fish called a Maigre, very like sea-bass. Then Avignon - a town that is one of the great Medieval walled towns and home to one of the most charming hotels. The courtyard with its ancient and beautifully manicured plane tree is worth staying for alone, but the Hotel de L'Europe is beautiful in every corner. Even my Kir was exceptional - a pale aromatic blush. Supper at a restaurant of only six tables called L'Estaminet, where we washed down a perfect soft and flavoursome Salade de Gesiers followed by a superb gigot d'agneau with the divine local Rasteau, which worked perfectly. 

Back to work and Avignon was catch-up time for most people who had struck out because of the rain. The shippers who are corralled in one of the pavilions worked away feverishly gathering and packing endless piles of purchases. My friend at Hedleys Humpers said that though the fair finished at midday they were still packing at 8.30pm. 

The final morning is Montpellier and this is where the champagne bar is. It is just a small white tent serving delicious bright and mineral rich Mayot-Lagoguey, but this is where at the end of the three-day marathon people come to reflect and philosophise. Now we will hear how fashion and the antique world collide and how happy that collision is. The shippers tell their own story with fevered packing and destinations marked for all the corners of the planet. My friends however - Lucky and the Pirate - complain that they have bought too little and paid too much. They bemoan the lack of new opportunities and new dealers. Christopher has bought well but that does not stop him reflecting on the lack of traffic to his shop in Pimlico. 

As the mood mellows so one topic of conversation begins to percolate to the top. The question on everyone's lips is: where does the taste for spurious white furniture - the so-called "shabby chic" - come from and when will it end? It affects everyone - not one aspect of interior decoration can survive untouched in the light of its glare. Carpets must be bland and washed out, objects from lamps to candlesticks must be without ornament or strong pattern or colour. Not everyone adheres to these rules, but the power of the aesthetic is formidable. Several very large stands at all the shows are dedicated to miles of decoratively destroyed painted furniture, and elsewhere, throughout the acres of old stuff, the spuriously and speciously damaged virtually new things proliferate with clear commercial success. Contemporary art needs space and the blandness of this style is gently respectful of the more serious art. There are other theories and probably genuine explanations but the world that lives and breathes through the public's enthusiasm for the old, the beautiful and the original craves a return to the appreciation of the real and period object. The fashion is still very strong and the market is there to both feed and consume. It seems that what is fashionable is almost a different market. Perhaps purveyors of the old school can hope for a burgeoning realisation that the truly original is actually something made to a good standard and that is both an echo of and a message from a specific time and place. In the end the pastiche might not seem so special and so innocent. Over a final parting glass of champagne we toast the fanciful dream that fashion will once more favour the antique.

Week 103- The changes wrought by age and time

I have started to notice and be upset by changes I see around me. I wonder whether this is like a new form of puberty, a phase we all go through when we hit a certain age. For all my life, up to now, I have celebrated and been eager to embrace the new and the innovative. I cannot wait for the new blockbuster film, the new skyscraper, the new restaurant, the new device, and the new anything really. But suddenly I feel the dead hand of nostalgia creep over me casting a dark shadow. 

In London in the Kings road there used to be a cafe called Picasso. It had banquettes in booths and was packed from early morning through the hours to early morning again. Sleazy tight-trousered men hung around waiting to chat up the young and innocent Sloanes, both male and female, and try to debauch them. The young never seemed to change and the sleaze wranglers never did either. It had been there since the 60s, the heyday of the Kings Road, and seemed to be indomitable; it was as if the whole place was preserved in aspic. It has gone.

In Madrid last weekend I was viewing the auction at Alcala and was looking forward to my tapas at O Cruceiros next door. The venerable white-jacketed and black-trousered staff behind the bar ministered to ones every need. A crude wooden square table with similar stools were my regular stopping point and their tomato bread, oily jamon and fluffy calamares kept me going through the day. Gone too.

calamares - image writer's own.

Now I am in Paris and the Hotel Lenox is being gutted. It is true that my heart belongs to the hotel de l'Universite, diagonally opposite, which I have been gracing since my parents took me there as a teenager; but the bar at the Lenox poured a mighty fine Martini and the deep luxurious coffee-coloured leather chairs have held me tenderly on many an occasion. Gone.

Heading to the Eurostar I got off the Metro and headed off following the signage for Grandes Lignes. Since the birth of the Eurostar I have walked up and turned right by the vegetable shop and headed for the escalator up into the heart of the station. Standing by the fruit there was always a cheerful evangelical who would blandish one with leaflets and God with a song and a broad toothy smile. Today we have to turn left and my wishful leafleteer has departed. 

All these places are like little stitches in the cloth of things I know. They have all been replaced, perhaps with better, cleaner and cleverer alternatives. But I feel their absence - tiny little cuts and losses. I guess there comes an age in life when change no longer seems like an opportunity but more like a loss, a burden and even a frustration. I no longer know the way; I have to learn new tricks.

As this altered perception of change becomes more and more noticeable so I find that this could equally be true for the antique and old master picture world. Those of us who have plodded along in an industrious way for our entire professional lives should be in a position to enjoy the fruits of our knowledge and experience. But it is not to be. Someone has demolished the building whilst we were not looking. Instead we have to dust the rubble from our clothes and look around just like new boys arriving at school. 

As I travel the world and meet with dealers who are mostly over 60 I notice that there is a clear binary divide between those who embrace the new and those who are waiting for things to change and 'get back to the good days'. I went to see a venerable dealer who has taken up residence in the basement of a friends shop. He has a fabulous collection. Everything in his area of the shop is exceptional, unusual and beautifully made. But he is waiting for the dealing world to rotate on its axis. He may - in the manner of the random movement of Brownian motion - bump into someone who could buy something, but he does not seek out markets or adjust his pricing strategy, or offer any explanation or justification of his prices. By contrast Simon Phillips, not far away, or in Paris Benjamin Steinitz are dealers who take a very different approach. They are all over the clients - offering help and advice and becoming part of the ongoing life of the objects. They realise the old days are just that - gone, dust. The new world is all about the clients and they are not looking hard for the exceptional object, they expect it to come to them.

But it is very hard to adjust. I see myself slipping away from the fundamental principle I have always tried to adhere to - that we must remain at all times nimble. For example; I know that I should not really buy things. Stock is money but rendered un-spendable. Knowing 'who' wants to buy 'what' is far more useful and lucrative. But I love things and I buy several things every week. The changes I see, the bastions that I thought I could rely on are crumbling all over the world. I want them all to come back. I know that this is not realistic and that I should shut my eyes, shake my head and go on into the new restaurant and see what they have to offer. 

The other day I met with Max Donnelly who now works at the V&A but came from the Fine Art Society, we had lunch at the Polish restaurant Daquise by South Kensington Station. As a child I used to be taken there as a treat following a visit to one of the museums. There was a huge glass case by the entrance full of cakes, strangely shaped and often equally strangely flavoured with things like - poppy seeds. It was all very foreign and exotic. Now it has changed; the new owner who is the son of the old one told me that he wanted to change everything but keep the spirit. I felt that here was the middle path. The staff came to the table and served us from dented and bruised saucepans, but the food they produced was delicious and fresh and still very traditional. So perhaps the answer is to weep for what has gone and but get excited about the new because the history will often be cozily wrapped up inside.

Week 101- Underground/Overground

The joy of London is that everything is here. There is an endless parade of buildings of every possible period and style available as a delicious smorgasbord. I have two bicycles - one for speeding and one for cruising. Depending on my mood and tardiness I will take in the city in different ways. On Monday I cruised up west on my Van Moof ( the cruising bike ) it is large heavy and looks like its made out of shiny new scaffolding. I took in the converted Bingo Hall on Kennington road, now luxury flats. Down past the Black Prince pub, recently featured in the film 'Kingsman' then past the old Doulton pottery factory, a terracotta clad 19th century fantasy, then the old docks where a plaque remembers Jon Snow's pioneering work on cholera, then the Art Deco Fire Brigade Station with its cunningly disguised vent in the form of an ancient obelisk. All this before I cross Lambeth Bridge, what a splendid city!

The Lambeth Doulton Factory, writer's own image

I am heading up to Le Petit Café in Stafford St to meet with my old Mallett colleague James Harvey who now works with Dreweatt Neate, the auctioneers in Donnington - who also now own Mallett. We are discussing the potential prospect of being consigned a group of pictures. Le Petit Café despite having a French name is totally Italian. They serve the best, most flavoursome al dente pasta dishes in London and some of the finest crispest fluffiest honey-coloured chips. Therefore as an act of sheer indulgence i nearly always order the scaloppa Milanese with spaghetti pomodoro with a side order of chips. I usually have to be carried back down the stairs afterwards but it is worth it as an occasional splurge. James is full of excitement as the new challenges of working for this very ambitious and dynamic auction house appeals to his entrepreneurial nature. In addition he is getting all the support from the management he felt he lacked before. We have a jolly lunch and he rushes off into the day ready to take on the world. Hardly has he left but Justin from Mallett walks up the stairs. He is also thrilled by the insertion of Dreweat Neat into his work world at Ely house. He is off to Palm Beach where Mallett are exhibiting. He has a long arduous journey across to Miami before he drives up to Palm Beach. He is nervous but excited about the future both in the short and in the medium term. We drink a glass of wine, strong black wine that warms us on a winter's day. Then he departs to be replaced by Mary Claire, the director of the Olympia fair. We drink water as she discusses her plans for a re-invigoration of the fair. She wants to bring a sense of value-for-money into the decorative arts world; as well as a sense of play and fun. These have been lost to the trade of late as one and all fear recession and a decline in business. It is good to hear someone so positive and enthusiastic for the future. She does have a real chance of success as the Olympia fair this year overlaps with many of the key auctions and the Masterpiece fair for a few days. It was a long lunch and I was grateful for my stately bicycle to ride me home.

Tuesday brought rides on the Northern Line. The Oval underground station is a beacon of calm in the manic world of commuter life. There is a bookshelf at the top of the escalator with books to borrow or take. There are large leafy potted plants placed as if we are in a Victorian conservatory. The tannoy softly wafts out classical music and on the wall there is a daily philosophical quote; today it is Oscar Wilde - be yourself, everyone else is already taken! Then off down into the horseshoe shaped tunnels, and within a minute or so I am in Clapham walking along the unusual, narrow but spacious feeling, island double platform (one of only two left on London Underground) and up out into the world to visit my restorer. Hatfields is my favoured workshop and it is miraculous going there and watching my projects there mature and reach ripeness. It is a never-ending pleasure to see how something that was bought with love and optimism break from its chrysalis and become what you saw in your minds eye when the dealer shook your hand many weeks ago. From there back into the depths and off to Bermondsey to see a friend who has come up with a plan to re-think and re-present the concept of the antique centre. He is young and full of the energy needed to accomplish the impossible. During my time running Mallett at Bourdon House I once learned a very humbling lesson. I used to allow members of staff who had been with the company for a year or so to go out and buy something. They had £5000 and if the object sold they had control of the initial £5000 and the profit to spend again. It was a good test and was an incentive too. I gave one newish chap his start and he shot off that very weekend and bought a pair of grey marble Solomonic columns. They arrived and I told him that I was disappointed. They were, in my view, an unsellable shape and an un-commercial height and what is more they lacked capitals. He was rather crestfallen following my criticism. We put them out on show and they sold handsomely straight away. He now has his own shop in Pimlico and does very well, Timothy Langston. The lesson for me was not that I was wrong but that with enthusiasm and commitment you can achieve anything. Tim passed on his passion for those columns and therefore they worked. I could not have pulled it off because I did not believe in them. My lunch partner feels committed to the idea of a hub in London for dealers and I am right behind him - I don't want to make the same mistake twice!

Oval Undergound Station with potted plants, writers own image.

I travelled home to the Oval to be greeted by my favourite words "this station is Oval"

Week 98 - Nose back to the grindstone.

The holiday period of Christmas and New Year seemed to last for a very long time this time round. A lot of drinking accompanied a lot of eating - a flock of roast birds and a shopping trolley of steamed fruit-based puddings. Crackers popping, silly hats worn in rakish fashion and bad jokes swirled round in my head for what seemed like an eternity. We drove and drove visiting friends and family spreading and receiving as much cheer as possible. 

Then it was all over. That Sunday came round which is the one before Monday. I know it always works that way but this is the Sunday be-fore the first working Monday of the year and you have to prepare yourself properly for the great return. 

I had planned to leap from my bed and take exercise followed by a hearty breakfast but it did not quite happen that way. I hauled myself out into the day following a rather later night than was wise. An eye-opening coffee and off I went into 2015. London was still deserted as I cycled around on that fell Monday. Everyone seemed to be reluctant to take the reins and get going. The streets lacked activity and many of the parking spaces were unoccupied around the West End like on a Sunday or a bank holiday. My bicycle did not go to Mallett and it did not go to Masterpiece. 

This New Year I am on my own and I feel like it is a real beginning and not just another rotation of the carousel. I had clients to meet and work to check up on at Hatfields, the restorers. The air was cold and rain was in the air, but the general grey gloom of the situation was strangely un-dampening. The workshop was open and they had worked on a pair of chairs that had escaped from a barn besmirched by the various winged and scuttling inhabitants. Now they were clean and the timber was revealed in a lustrous way. It gave me a thrill, like a surge of energy, to see the glowing streaky wood where just murk and dirt had been, like drawing a curtain and disclosing a sunny day.

Image credit: Symbol of Christmas taken by self.

I had a meeting in the Strand about a potential collaboration. The meeting began with a recitation of our various experiences over the preceding fortnight. Having got that behind us, we felt reinvigorated, as we got down to prospective planning. I am not sure what will ensue but it was very encouraging to contemplate something that 'may' happen later in the year. On the way out I got a call from a dealer in Norfolk and we discussed the forthcoming Battersea decorative show. 

Over Christmas you get the sense that you live in weird bacchanalian bubble, but re-connecting in this way made the trading world seem visible before me. In my inbox there were emails from the USA, China, Belgium and Denmark - with a sputter and a whirr my peculiar working world was sparking back to life. I got home and booked my tickets for Miami at the end of the month and to visit BRAFA on the 22nd. The year was beginning in earnest. 

Then I saw the leaflet for the Mayfair Antique Fair. I had never been, although the event has been running for a few years. It takes place in the Marriott hotel by Grosvenor Square, and is small and not particularly inspiring, but I met with various friends who were optimistically stalling out. The textile dealer Marilyn Garrow, Tim Langston who sells an eclectic medley of treasures in Pimlico and the ever elegant Charles Plante who is the master of selling stylish and very small pictures of baffling charm. They were all pleased to have got through 2014 and to be welcoming the New Year. I arrived towards the end of the day and the mood was cautiously buoyant. 

Back at home I looked again through my emails and realized that I needed to decide whether I was going to exhibit at the summer Olympia or not. It would be a significant commitment but I decided to go for it. Suddenly it occurred to me that at the end of this first working day of the year the shape of my first six months were now set. 

Many look at the year ahead and dread it, some look at it with eagerness and optimism. For a wandering unfocussed dealer like me facing a year like a fresh empty notebook - a brand new and challenging Christmas present - it was both, and I just have to get on with it. I finished the day with cocktails at Little House in Curzon Street. The place is small and always busy but if you get there after 10pm there is usually space at the bar. We ordered a Perfect Manhattan and a Vodka Dry Martini made with Ketel One, with its distinctive peppery note. They have - oddly like the barmen at London's Balthasar - decided to eschew shaking cocktails, and to stir them all instead. The reason being that stirring makes for less dilution and fewer shards of ice in your drink. We were served these in vintage cocktail glasses bought from a shop in Angel. I found this most apt. I do have a habit of seeing metaphor in everything but I detected in these delicious drinks a new smell in the air. 

A search for perfection had brought a subtle change in mixing, a splash of the new - and the introduction of a bit of antique into this fashion-conscious world was a good thought to take into the New Year. Cheers.

Week 97 - Memorial in Amsterdam

Another early start! 6 am and I am gathering my sons and chasing down to Folkestone. The traffic is light but I still manage to miss my slot at the Eurotunnel by 10 minutes. I had cunningly bought a discount return - £70 return for an overnight stay. Clearly aimed at serious shoppers/booze-cruisers. The logo-jacketed woman at the kiosk looked down and scolded me for my tardiness. She could, she said, squeeze me onto a shuttle leaving in 4 hours time. We had an agenda, I had dealers to meet and we had to be in Amsterdam by 5pm. I peered out of the window and thought for an instant. "What if I paid more money?" She made a face as if I was offering a bribe and then brightly came back with the 'flexi plus option'. £200 and ten minutes later we were loading ourselves into the train. The boys had grabbed sandwiches and I had snaffled two cups of espresso. Oddly, despite the fact that you pay for swift and painless access on to the train rather than the food - the snacks are a potential treat, but disappointingly they were measly and ghastly. My son is dairy intolerant and there simply was not an option for him. Everything had butter or cheese on it. Hopeless. 

Within a trice we were driving through France towards Belgium. The boys had been at a party the night before and so they slept. In addition my musical taste is not theirs so whilst they dozed I was not allowed to listen to music, as my choices would have been too toxic. 

My first call was at Paul de Grande in Jabbeke. He is twinkly, grey haired and wears thick-rimmed stylish glasses. Visually he is a cross between a trendy professor and an architect. He looks and is both clever and wily. We had a speedy look round his castle and sadly found nothing to buy. He and his girlfriend were heading off for a weekend in France or Germany. His first stop was a nearby auction. Depending on how he felt during the sale he would turn left to France or right into Germany. Such is the joy of living beside a big motorway in continental Europe. The boys slept on not waking even whilst I did my tour. 

Then we raced on to Haaltert to visit Joost, who has a beautiful house in the shadow of the main church there. There is a funeral taking place and the mourners pour out and process slowly behind the unexpectedly cheerful bright green hearse, which bears in gaudy white script the name of the undertaker, his services and telephone number. Joost has three rooms of furniture and they are always carefully and elegantly chosen pieces. I spot two things that could work. Photos and measurements ensue. These days a straightforward purchase has become a rarity. One needs time to think and assess. But these are two fabulous pieces and I hope to be able to use them. The boys are still asleep in the car. 

Our last stop before Amsterdam is Den Bosch or 's Hertogenbosch. This almost unpronounceable place is where the Masterpiece exhibitor Vanderven have their home base. But it is not them I am visiting it is Bill and Cornelia. They are the most wonderful welcoming couple. They have been in the business since Bill was a child and he is now pushing towards eighty. He buys and sells at a gentle pace now but his love and enthusiasm for the business is undimmed. We drink coffee and discuss the past and the problems of the present. I cannot stop myself buying a few trifles from him and it was with sadness that I dragged myself away and we packed the items into the car, thereby waking the sleeping beauties. Sadness because my calls today were all to the old guard. These are the last men standing. This road trip used to be so full of calls that you needed at least a couple of days to complete it. Now all it consists of is two men over 70 and one nearly 60. I had a great time chatting, reminiscing and buying. But the sense that it won't be around for much longer coloured the buoyant mood. 

These melancholy thoughts put me in the right mood for the visit to Amsterdam. Simon, the brother of my ex wife had been in a relationship and subsequently a marriage with David for a shade over 30 years. David had died the week before aged 94. He had been a powerful, strong, tall and upright man all his life and his last years had not diminished him at all. In many ways his elegant and dignified bearing had been a lesson and a guide to me and I felt strongly that I wanted to attend his memorial service. Arriving in the city on time and installing ourselves in the hotel we immediately left to dine with Simon and old friends at Cafe Amsterdam, a vast restaurant based in an old pumping station. We had eaten here all together on several occasions. The turbines glossily restored acting as a vivid backdrop to the oysters, brown shrimps and confit of red deer. We toasted David and remembered how many key moments of our lives he had been the witness to - or the marker for. The supper was not sad but it was full of thought and reminiscence. 

The next day at the Catholic Church the local bishop officiated. David was not Catholic but objected to the guitars in the Anglican Church nearby. He shied away from the details of the mass and even most of the other parishioners; instead he would take communion and then attend to the garden, pruning and planting where necessary. Thus he had passed most Sundays for over 20 years. The bishop looked at David's life and found it near exemplary. He had lived through a time when his sexuality could have landed him in jail. But with discretion but not deceit he had led a full and open life. Being the warden of a Reading university hall of residence for 30 years, having already had a career as a navy pilot; he then had a third life in retirement living with Simon in Amsterdam. Being gay was important and he abhorred any prejudice, but he was not militant. He just wanted and carved out for himself a full and unlimited life. We could all aspire to achieve as much. 

In torrential rain we rushed over to their flat to join together in an extended memory of David. Before long though the time came for us to head back to London; we turned our car towards Calais. Inigo had worn a collarless shirt in homage to David who often stated his hatred of restrictive collars. Vladimir sang melancholy songs and we spend the hours returning chewing over the day. I had wept for David and though the car was a bit full with boys and antiques, it seemed respectful to the years we had known each other.

Week 96 - The Smell of Art

There are times when you can get a strong whiff of how something or someone is doing. Everything has its own particular aroma and I was particularly struck by the pong of the Ming. One of the best museum membership cards in London is the one for the British Museum. With it you get a few discounts and access to the usually overfull 'friends' room, but most importantly you can waft past all the queues for the shows and just plunge straight in. For some reason I always get in a muddle at the BM finding my way to the entrance to any exhibition particularly difficult this time because it was in the new Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery - only the second show here I think after Vikings. So I get to enjoy an inadvertent perambulation around the sundry fixed exhibits. It is amongst these regular treasures that you get your first sense of the smell of the place. It is not that it smells bad. The simple truth is that it is quite hard to define exactly what is impacting on ones nostrils. It is not body odour, though the thick mob that seemingly always hang around the Egyptian mummies always has a full and warm smell. It is not the air-conditioning, which does give a peculiar controlled artificiality to everything. It is not the weather outside, which is typical London - grey, slightly wet, cold but not freezing. The weather does make an impact but it is nebulous - intangible. The museum has a very definite and individual smell; oddly, as soon as you enter the exhibition itself that smell changes. It changes as the lights dim and the crowd alters from those who are thrilled to be visiting the museum during their stay in London and those who have come specifically to enjoy this particular show . There are crowds on both sides of the door but the inner crowd is subtly different. This one is examining in detail the description boards and poring over each item with a vampires desire to drain it of all the knowledge it has to impart. It is equally impossible to define this smell but it is palpable and distracting. 

As I make my slow progress, in particular crouching down to take photographs of the underside of the red cinnabar lacquer table (this is the acid test of Chinese furniture as early pieces are totally unfinished and dry - almost dusty - below, whereas later pieces often have a lacquer finish) I stop for a moment to breath in this indefinable air. As I struggle and fail to analyse exactly what makes up this 'air of seriousness' I wonder what other smells there are in the art world.

My favourite new client has just bought a house and I am going to help him furnish it. I went round to have a first look. Lying on the floor was a heap of cardboard, because he and his girlfriend had been out shopping for saucepans. The newly emptied boxes were lying strewn all around. They had recently purchased a couple of fun objects from me at the Olympia fair - a cocktail shaker and couple of wine jugs, which were sitting on the counter in the kitchen. All around was a smell of novelty, excitement and nervous energy. The house will need a lot of work before they can move in yet the couple is full of anticipation and optimism, and that has a definite smell. Their future together, maybe even as parents etc, is all there, encapsulated in the smell of a recently opened cardboard box, new paint, and a kitchen devoid of the engrained grease of years of cooking. Not just new - fresh. It is a very appealing scent and though it will not last, it will linger in the memory. 

Some smells are off-putting though. I think the smell of old upholstery and curtains can really dis-tract one's attention. Back in the old days I used to visit Christie's South Kensington on a Monday night. A group of us would gather there for the late view and afterwards share a glass of restoring wine at Luigi Malone's next door. The bar is long gone now but for many a year it was a sort of Monday night clubhouse. The rooms at Christie's were full of furniture and objects covering all the main collecting areas. Crowds gathered too and sometimes even the occasional celebrity would flit around trying to look and not be looked at. Mick Jagger and Bob Geldof were regulars. But the smell of the place was not good. The imagination ran wild and probably correctly, ranging over why the old sofas and chairs, curtains, clothes and anything involving fabric smelt so bad - of damp, dust, decay and often death. One could almost smell the relatives loading their dearly-departed's collections onto the Christie's van. Nowadays the rooms are filled less often and the buyers browse and bid online. The social gathering has gone and so has the acrid smell. I miss that smell.

Back in the Ming exhibition I rise from the floor and continue my tour. This exhibition has been a huge success - friends from America have flown over more or less just to see it. The objects are well chosen and very expressive of the short period that they illustrate - socially, politically as well as culturally. Here, I think, is the so-called smell of success. The happiness you feel when suffused with optimism. Having been inducted into something new - or better still having had one's current knowledge focused and enhanced, makes one feel good. Perhaps we all smell better when we feel better. As I leave I reflect that though smell is the least glamorous of our senses it is probably more of a driver than we think. My son Vladimir always smells something before he buys it; defining the actual smell is not important - he says it just has to smell 'right'. If I buy a chest of drawers I always sniff a drawer, which also needs to smell right - the timber has to have lost its sappiness and have the smell of old saw-cuts and dust. It is the smell that counts.

Week 95 - Normal for Norfolk

I love shopping. In fact I would have to admit that I have made a career of it. So, when my friend, fireball antiquarian book dealer Daniel Crouch, asked me to accompany him as shotgun on a trip to my favourite shopping county Norfolk, it would have been churlish to refuse. My reward was not to be monetary but gastronomic, as we were to be booked in and fed at the Gunton Arms. Given that the destination was Norfolk this exchange suited me perfectly. 

Daniel is an awesome storyteller and the scrapes and the adventures he has been through would fill several books - let alone a small short blog. But there is hardly a city on this planet where he has not fought his way out of a bar and into the arms of a very sellable undervalued atlas or map. He is only a shade past 40 years of age and if he does not die young from excess he will be busy amusing his friends and making heavy sacks of money for plenty of years to come. 

Passing Norwich we toyed with visiting the dealer come carp enthusiast Richard Cranmer but he declined our visit. He is one of those dealers who have rooms of charming and sellable material but none of it is for sale. I only go once every three or so years, as it is pretty dispiriting and annoying. Thus we started our tour in Aylsham at the den of Pearse Lukies. He is known affectionately and accurately as Baldy. The epithet is particularly appropriate as he is a bald speaker too. He has an amazingly eclectic eye and you would be mad to waste your time predicting what you might encounter. True, you could predict and anticipate finding knackered bits of medieval carving and a flurry of early furniture but further guesswork would be futile. Daniel is looking for a refectory table for his hall and a trunk to use as both toy storage and a coffee table. We examine together a quantity - but a colonial brass bound Chinese hardwood trunk, a Charles X mahogany ottoman and an English late regency desk with extraordinary bone knob handles, distract me. As the discussions progress so a charming pair of rosewood William IV occasional tables, in residual order, emerge and I am compelled to take them on. Accompanying Pearse is his son Morgan who has come into the business and chatters away with great enthusiasm and innocent salesmanship - to the affectionate amazement of his father. We take our leave and head to Holt, I have spent money but Daniel has held back. 

Holt frustrated as Tony Fell was out - even though his shop said otherwise. We repaired to visit the shop of erstwhile London book dealer Simon Finch. He too was out, on this occasion the shop was open and manned but the boss was not in residence. Daniel rang and we made a date for the following morning. Then accepting defeat as inevitable - but also gleeful for what lay before us - we headed for the Gunton Arms. The background to the pub is that Ivor Braka, the very private contemporary art dealer, owns it. Back in the summer in London he had hosted a dinner for the artist sculptor Philip King. The dealer Thomas Dane had been cajoled, by me, into doing a show alongside and in Masterpiece and before it opened Ivor laid on an amazing feast at which Philip's praises were sung by the great and the good including Nicholas Serota from the Tate. Here in Norfolk the small charming flint clad pub on the edge of the Gunton estate has been freshened up with challenging contemporary art and the discreet luxury of the decorator Robert Kime. We ate in the Elk room cooked for by the large and homely chef who cooked rib eye steak and roast potatoes on a flat plate above a roaring fire. It all felt like a living medieval painting - a living Breughel amid the contemporary art. 

Our Holt friend Tony Fell was our first visit in the morning and like Pearse he failed to lure Daniel into a purchase. But I did come close. From Tony we sped to Voewood, the home of Simon Finch. The house is an extraordinary fantasy of Arts and Crafts; designed and built by the architect E S Prior for the Rev Percy Lloyd between 1903 and 1905, it cost the staggering sum of £60,000 to construct - according to Simon five times the original budget. The building is surrounded by sunken gardens created by offering up their soil to the building construction. Simon is a rock and roll antiquarian book dealer who has gone through a number of business and health vicissitudes. Today he looks tired and a trifle ragged. But as we toured his remarkable home he sprang to life, even his gnarly jumper seemed to perk up. Each room offered up a story and was a work of miniature genius; the imagination and creativity expressed could not fail to both charm and enchant anyone. Though he is currently in a sort of business limbo he is one of the most talented dealers and interior designers of our generation. We found ourselves exploring his cellars, which were choc-a-bloc with ephemera and several thousand books. We unearthed a marvellous bar stool. I could not help buying it and I manoeuvred it into the back of Daniel's swish silver Mercedes. I was sorry to leave. Heading home from my Norfolk sojourn I was once more pleasantly struck that here can be found such an amazing confluence of talented and original people.

Week 94 - Post Olympia Reflections

Sunday 5pm rolled round and the Olympia fair morphed from the serene elegance of a West London antique show into a frantic scramble of destruction. Everyone wants to get out at once, and we wrestle for access to the stores. Plastic boxes and bubble-wrap replace the aged visitors and family friends who formed the residual visitor crowd. I had been hoping for a final flurry of cheeky offers with which to tussle. Emails had been buzzing away from my various devices to supposedly interested parties for the last few days and expectation was present - if not high. But the phone remained stubbornly silent. I packed up, the carriers arrived and we all beetled around. A few handshakes, a few hugs and the occasional kiss later and my goodbyes are done and the car is threading its way through the traffic home. Three shows ended at Olympia at the same time, and the ensuing chaos and bad temper left all feeling a little bruised. Another long hour passes and van's contents have all been disgorged into my sitting room at the Oval and the process of re-ordering will begin in the morning.

But not before a semi-ritual of dining at the Dragon Castle in Elephant and Castle. When this restaurant opened its grandiose portals rumour had it that a group of Hong Kong Chinese had been conned by a wily estate agent into opening here. The famously rough area with its double roundabout and run-down shopping centre seemed a totally incongruous home for a glamorous and enormous restaurant. Not only did it seem out of place, it also served absolutely excellent dishes - both traditional and innovative. It has been flourishing now for over a decade and whilst the interior sheen has slightly rubbed off, the quality of the output is undimmed. My sons had notionally helped with the breakdown and their friend Oscar had been my sidekick all week, so we all deserved the post-fair Dragon Castle feast. We duly did what you might call a classic, which is to massively over-order - but then, because I was in the company of three ravenous young men, it all got swiftly and thoroughly demolished. The gastronomic highlights were their legendary soft shell crab, which is so light and crispy you almost have to hold it down to stop it floating off; and the sticky rice which comes folded into a leaf and is full of dark rice and mysterious strange dark bits. It is delicious, heavy and sticky - though billed as enough for the table, each lad consumes one solo.

So, it is over. The food is eaten. The goods are back at home and eyes start to scan the horizon for the next stop on the endless caravan trail of fairs. In retrospect, the fair had seemed poorly attended and there were times when one could look down the aisle and not even see the exhibitors as they were tucked away on their phones or nestled snugly drinking coffee at the back of their stands. You hop disconsolately from foot to foot. But what is the alternative? To sit in a shop and stare at the unopened front door? Despite the longueurs, despite the ghastly coffee, despite the visitors who come wearing fancy dress - like one who came in an illuminated flashing clown's hat, or the elderly gentleman who came in very short shorts - the deals do get done. Obviously we cannot all aspire to being the dealing machine that is Roger Lamb, but most of the trade stalling out their wares seemed happy enough as they scrabbled to tear down their booths and head off into the night. It is a debate that continues to rage. The costs of doing a fair are massively high in comparison to the annual rent of a shop. Yet, fairs continue to proliferate. I have a client in London who is always busy. I sent him a ticket to the fair and he came and he bought something I would never have anticipated. The significance of this is - I would not have guessed to email him its picture. What is more he would never come into a shop; that would be like me visiting one of the famous tourist sites of London. For example, I rarely, if ever, go to the Natural History Museum. I know it's there and I know that it is wonderful and I would enjoy it. But there is no need to go today because tomorrow it will still be there. There is - in other words - no pressure. The conclusion is that you need to do fairs even to see your local clients - in addition to the hope that you will make a new friend who will ask you to fulfil all their buying needs for the next 20 years. Well, that would be nice! The modern dealer needs to get out and about; sitting waiting for the next transaction is a recipe for inertia and decline. But writing off shops is also clearly a mistake. Many people like to visit a shop, but the visit to premises has become a planned choice rather than a serendipitous accident. Clients come and see you only if you make the journey worthwhile. It is all an effort. In the end I did business at the Olympia fair and it was hard work; but there again a little hard work never hurt anyone.

Week 93 - Death Stalks the Hall

I took my little black dog out for a walk. She always sits sweetly and patiently at the lights. She trots along obediently and ever so slightly swaggering she crosses the road and scampers off into the churchyard. She runs and leaps with puppyish enthusiasm despite being a mature 2 years old. She chases the squirrels and rushes blindly after the pigeons. She sniffs and is sniffed and it is all very innocent and charming. This morning she spots a flock of blackbirds and rushes. They scatter screaming in indignation - but one is a bit lame. It hops rather than flies off. A short but lethal dance ensues as the black bird narrowly escapes the dog again and again - and then she strikes. The pretty gentle silk-coated spaniel bites down hard on the neck of the blackbird. She twitches and twitches and each time the dog holds on harder and more lethally. Death is the inevitable conclu-sion. I arrive on the scene too late to stop the initial strike; I watch from afar, it is like a ballet being performed on a stage. I debated for a second and decided to let nature take its course. Separating them would have left the bird mortally wounded and it seemed the better of the potential evils to let her to finish her kill. She was effective. I put the bird in the bin and we went home. The dog was breathing hard; the intensity of the moment clearly making her heart beat fast. 

After this morning drama I headed off to the Olympia Winter Antique Fair where I am exhibiting for the first time. It is an odd thing to say - as I have been an exhibitor at Olympia countless times as a scion of Mallett, but this is the first one with my name over the door. The winter Olympia has shrunk over the years, from its heyday when it covered the main floor and the balcony. It is down to just over 100 stands, which is still a big fair, but it feels small and intimate. It is a beautiful fair too. Simply built it has a neo-classical white design, which compliments the magnificent white ironwork of the building. The dealers have a collegiate air and everyone is very encouraging and helpful. The opening is low key with a few glasses of near toxic sweet Prosecco, which encourages one and all to remain sober. Sales do happen and the dealers seem not too gloomy. My neighbour Roger Lamb is dapper and charming. Medium height with well cut grey suits and hair. He sells traditional old school English furniture. He is pretty old school himself. But he does it with a weather eye to modern taste. He has eschewed damask silk for modern un-patterned fabrics and this renders the Georgian mahogany and walnut much more contemporary. In addition he is commercial. His prices are low and he is happy to take a short profit. He may not be a Young Turk but he is
totally young in his outlook. As I watched my black dog kill I worried that it was an omen or a symbol of the demise of our trade. But it was not true - here before me is the future. I am optimistic be-cause I can see that the wheel does not have to re-invented it can be re-upholstered instead. 

But the transition is hard and amongst my friends death is closer than ever. Recently, two great figures in the trade have died, coincidentally both called Paul. Paul Johnson from Ireland, who was the pre-eminent dealer in 18th century Irish furniture and Paul Tomasso, father of the Tomasso brothers who are titans in the world of great sculpture. The trade is greatly diminished and a little less interesting following their passing. The sad mood of the moment is enhanced by the weather in London, which has been very peculiar. It has been unseasonably very warm and the skies are blue. But Nature is not fooled and the leaves are brown and make a lovely rustle as you brush through them on the grass. The pavements look like they have been printed with leaves as the damp leaves marks when the leaves are tidied away. But now suddenly it is getting cold and the rain is tumbling. The season change echoes the departed and seems a herald to a change across the market too. The sales in NY at the Haughton fair and in the auctions were erratic and patchy and that is not encouraging. There the mid term elections maybe acted as a distraction. But the omens are that there will be another lurch downwards. Here in London the contemporary art world seems still strong but even there is a new air of wariness abroad. A change is in the air here too. Again the untimely but natural death in the park seams portentous. This is the natural way of things and though one can intervene it is ultimately useless, what must be must be. But Roger Lamb is hope for us all. They say that Antique dealing is the second 'oldest' profession. We will survive, find a way and some will flourish.

Back at the fair the night is falling and the interior glow of the fair takes over from Natural light and a wintery twinkle takes over. Next door a fair called the Spirit of Christmas is opening and crowds and crowds are queuing up to buy early Christmas cheer. The buzz washes through and cold optimism pervades.

Week 92 - Quo Vadis?

It is a strange moment. I do not know where to go or what to see. There is so much going on that it seems easier to stay in bed and pull the covers up over my head and sing nursery rhymes. Frieze is in town and it has two identities - Frieze and Frieze Masters. In Berkeley Square Patrick Perrin has his launch PAD. Elsewhere private gallery shows and public exhibitions are opening like untimely spring flowers all over town. Coupled with this my alma mater Mallett has been sold to Stanley Gibbons, the group founded around the stamp people, but which now owns the auction house Dreweatts Bloomsbury, Baldwins and Apex. The difficult and challenging times that Mallett have faced over the last half-decade are entering a new chapter. This is all taking place in my backyard, so to speak. But there are even more excitements and temptations for foreign travel. Across the pond in our art world twin city of New York there is the auction of the Kentshire gallery. In addition, pushing through the notoriously heavy doors of the 7th Regiment Armory on Park Avenue you will encounter the International Fair hosted by the (appropriately) veteran fair organisers Brian and Anna Haughton. 

So I am in bed and I don't know who to see or who to visit. I am flummoxed whether I should take a plane or mount my bicycle and head up to the west end. New York is the biggest pull. Back in time the principals of the business Fred and Bob used to come to London every couple of months. They bought widely from every dealer spreading good will and the dollar to happy recipients. Bob has thinning black hair and a charming calm demeanour and Fred has bushy once brown, now grey wavy hair and is full of febrile energy and NY sardonic humour. Bob's children have headed west to California and are movers and shakers in the film business, or so I gather. Fred is married to Marcie and they produced two children Mathew -sensible, steady, but fun too; and Carrie - one of the most original women to grace the planet. She has one of those imaginations that you know could go anywhere and a sense of business that would scare a Rothschild. These two have come into the antique trade. Kentshire has changed however; like so many of their generation the guys found that the English furniture and decorative objects gig had become too much of a grind - they sold their huge downtown building and all their stock is going to be sold at Sotheby's. Meanwhile their wives had founded a jewellery emporium, which flourishes. Carrie and Mathew trade now in the rocks and precious metals world and Bob and Fred are sitting back. In my early days in Mallett I often sold to them; in my mid years I got to know the second generation; latterly I have come to respect and admire them as they carry the baton on into the future. I would love to be present as the hammer comes down on the past and the next phase springs phoenix-like from the last lot. 

But that is not all, Mallett are exhibiting at the International show. They dropped out last year and now return, but the main interest for the onlooker is the gossip about the takeover. If they have fabulous things and make eye-watering sales it would be wonderful but everyone will want to find out about their future. But I am compelled to stay in London, though the urge to fly is strong I cannot resist Frieze Masters, its contemporary forebear and the satellite PAD. 

I visit PAD late, have a quick canter round and a brief discussion with Francois Laffanour of Galerie Downtown. He always puts on a spectacular show of 20th century design masters and this is no exception. We both vet Miami Basel Design and he is impressively charming at all times, as well as being on of the pre-eminent dealers in his field. He is content with business but not thrilled - the mood of the fair. Upstairs I am attending the launch dinner of the Art Book, a new magazine created and published by Oscar Humphries - my least reliable friend. The wine flows and Patrick Perrin is very supportive. The food is eccentric - backed potato and caviar as the main course. But it is delicious and clever - a bit like Oscar. The magazine is amazingly beautiful and heavy and we stagger out into the night flexing our biceps to bear it home. 

Frieze is visited by the world and it has its own particular identity being both international and very British. It is the secret fact of Frieze that it is a great place to start collecting. The works are mainly quite reasonably priced, under £10,000; and carefully curated by the management team, so you do get a good chance of buying a future star. Frieze masters is totally different - here the great works get a discrete and elegant display. There are Old Master pictures, Sculpture, Antiquities, a smattering of Tribal and Asian art and the occasional photograph - Hans Kraus, everyone's favourite early photography dealer, for example. There is no Jewellery and no furniture so it does not compare or compete with Masterpiece or even TEFAF. It is a serious show with serious works and it does not really have anything to do with Frieze down the road except for a few of the hot shot contemporary dealers who get the chance to show work which is older than 10 years. 

I did get out of bed and in the end my bicycle served me well.

Week 91 - LAPADA, Battersea and Rome

In Berkeley Square you normally admire the trees, the tired bedraggled grass, and the stoic office workers stalwartly enjoying fresh air, whilst cars and trucks go round and round, circling like lions around Christians in the Colosseum. But at this time of year the pattern is disrupted by the landing of a massive tent, like a space ship, on the north side of the square. The tent serves as home to the LAPADA fair first and then the PAD fair will follow. The former is the flagship for the provincial dealers and they wave the flag doggedly, confidently asserting the value and significance of the local dealer. There is a smattering of the London trade too, together with slightly forlorn and lost looking international dealers - they look like travellers who have caught the wrong train and are doing their best to get home. The look of the fair is very chic as Stabilo - the builders of TEFAF and Masterpiece - have built it. White autumnal leaves adorn the carpet, and the ever elegant director Mieka stalks the floor ministering to the wants and needs of her clients, visitors and press. The mood amongst the trade is wary but optimistic and as the opening day passes so does the spread of little red measles dots indicating business is underway. I don't stay long as I find the dominant black decor slightly funereal but my friends are happy enough. 

Further south in Battersea Park the Decorative Fair is open. This is a charming fair full of activity and life, animated particularly by sleeping, strolling and barking dogs. Furniture is always being carried in and out as no dealer wants to leave sold items on their stand. The flow makes the whole room feel very lovely and there is a buzz - possibly deceptive, as chests of drawers on the move and the occasional sofa do not necessarily indicate a mass of sales. But the crowd is welcoming and there is a trolley that rolls around guided by cheerful Australian girls selling champagne and cocktails. The feeling is very much one of a party. I am tempted by a few items and naturally I gravitate towards Ferdinando Jewels. Louise is sharing with Nick Wells, one my alumni from the university of Mallett. Their stand looks well and as per usual Louise is mobbed by women trying things on. 

My flat has been transformed into a workshop as a keen young man called Oscar comes round and transforms the black and tarnished objects bought in the south of France into shiny silver things. Cleaning silver is hard work but the results are magical. The deep grey and black becomes a precious metal and the craftsman's original design emerges from the gloom like a butterfly from its chrysalis. Oscar sits in the garden, his hands black with cleaning products and the grime from the objects. His mood is good because, though the work is hard, the results are visible and rewarding. 

A day wrestling with London Transport and Ryanair and we are in Rome. Sitting in front of us on the plane is a large man with a straggly beard. He drinks double vodkas throughout the flight, each time with a different fizzy drink mixer. He begins quiet behind his over-scale sunglasses, but gradually the alcohol warms him and he starts chatting to and joking with the small fair-haired air-hostess. By the end of the two and a half hour flight he is garrulous and waxes grandiloquent on the joy and speed of international travel. He laughs loudly and we are all a little awkward but thank-fully we have just landed and we disembark swiftly. On the ground he lets out a quick roar of excitement at having arrived and the start of his Roman adventure. I share his pleasure, his thrill, and his wonder at the miracle of being able to wake up in London and to watch the sunset in Rome. We are very lucky and the fact that this time it took an exuberant drunken Chilean living in Kingston-upon-Thames to bring it home to me, it is all true. Dinner at Da Fortunato beside my favourite building in the world, the Pantheon. The oppressive, unforgiving lighting which is such a classic of old school Italian restaurants becomes unimportant as a plate of Parma ham arrives still slightly warm from the slicing machine. This is accompanied by warm fluffy stuffed fiori di zucchini and a small football of milky Mozzarella. Falanghina white wine and dark red Aglianico del Vulture add a volcanic soil minerality to our dining which wakes us up for our pepper and black truffle pasta and keeps us going until the last mouthful of the beef tagliata that rounds off our meal. A shared bowl of those succulent jewels of the forest, wild strawberries, and all that remains is the walk home via the best ice cream shop in Rome - Giolitti. Two tiny scoops - one of pistachio and one of blackberry sorbet - and then bed, contemplating the wisdom of the Chilean. 

The Palazzo Venezia is home to the Rome Biennale. The palazzo is only partially obscured by the fair and its magnificence creeps out at the corners and when you look up the ceilings. The history of any building in Rome is a tapestry of information but this building is both an erstwhile papal residence and was also used by Mussolini, whose presence can be felt everywhere. Many of his most important speeches were delivered from the balcony to crowds in the piazza below, and the exhibitors are keen to recount tales of where he kept and engaged with his numerous girlfriends. The fair is mixed in style with a smattering from every epoch and style. Some of the Italian Masterpiece exhibitors show here. Most claim to exhibit for reasons of loyalty to their capital rather than pure commerce. But as you would expect, elegance abounds, with fine pieces in every room - the mood is fundamentally buoyant. One exhibitor I spoke to had come not anticipating much but had sold eight paintings. As they often say, "You won't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket."

Week - 90 - The Paris Biennale to Beziers

Paris wakes up the art world's Autumn season every two years. 2014 is one of those years. On the 9th of September there is a huge and fancy dinner for the VIPs, yours truly not invited once again. And on the 10th at 6.30 the normal preview crowd gather to enjoy the much anticipated glamour of this capital city art show.

But Paris is not just about the Biennale - the whole city of art and design sparkles in the early autumn sun and shows proliferate. My friend Sylvain, who has an exquisite gallery on the Quai Voltaire, is putting his best foot forward with a gathering of Meissen porcelain. Over on the Right Bank in the Faubourg St Honore, Philippe Perrin is showing photography and polished steel furniture, whilst next door Marella Rossi, the charming daughter of the legendary Jean Marie Rossi, has a mixed show with tribal art and has recreated a room from a film-making collector's home. Down the road the ever energetic Benjamin Steinitz has a one-man show of the Art Nouveau cabinet maker Le Lievre. Back over the river and Nicolas and Alexis Kugel have a spectacular show of silver-gilt pieces from Strasbourg dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The city buzzes with excitement as everyone gossips about who is doing what and where. We rush from one much vaunted event to another, passing by Sotheby's and Christie's on the way. There is a palpable sense of the market rousing itself from its slothful summer recess and everyone is now raring to go and get down to the serious work of buying and selling.

Feeling a little naughty I decided to arrive at the preview at 6.45 rather than be there on the dot of the opening time. I presumed that this would allow the crowd to enter and I could therefore stroll in without the burden of queuing. What a mistake. The line was horrendous. It snaked right round from the front of the Grand Palais past the corner and almost around to the back. It is not often you see such a dressed-up crowd being kept waiting, kicking their high heels. Nearly an hour later the aficionados were finally let in. You cannot compare any venue to the Grand Palais which is simply majestic - a festival of glass and iron, it swoops and swirls with captivating verve. Any show has a challenge matching up to these surroundings. The look of the Biennale changes every iteration and some years it is truly spectacular. In 2012 the central area was dominated by a massive Montgolfier-style balloon. This year the feeling was more muted. The theme was garden pavilions, each stand decorated with a white trellis against a green ground. The carpet was green too with patriotic fleur-de-lys amid subsidiary scrolls. However, the Ruinart champagne flowed like the Seine and the snacks were copious, innovative and delicious. Pretty and elegant waiters popped up hither and thither with micro work stations from which they dispensed morsels of foie gras or finely chopped aubergine on a leaf of crispy parmesan-infused pastry. The preview crowd began their progress in a demure fashion but sadly as the evening progressed so the event descended into the familiar scrabble for delights from the caterers.

As as been the pattern over the last few fairs, jewels dominate with all the big names parading their wares. This year the laurels for the most talked-about show went to the Hong Kong maverick Wallace Chan who brought pieces of extreme fantasy and eye-watering extravagance. It will be a long time before I forget the the white jade model of a fisherman draped in rags of 24 carot gold and bearing his catch of ruby and diamond encrusted fish. Garnishing this drama are a few traditional dealers in furniture, paintings, sculpture and and antiquities but they seem peripheral, an adjunct - not the main attraction. I did see many masterpieces; Chenel put on a superb and dramatic display of white marble from ancient Greece and Rome. Gismondi brought some breathtaking examples of Pietra Dura, quite the best I have seen in Years. The dealers crowded round gasping in awe. It was also always a treat to see the dealers Kraemer who have some of the finest French furniture on the market and who very rarely show at fairs apart from this one.

Weary with opulence we headed off to the Brasserie Lipp where the show ceded prominence to a simple meal in this legendary place. Dark red wine from near Beaune, called St Joseph, accompanied by foie gras, delicate sweet small oysters followed by a robust and hearty steak tartare. Good discussion ranging over the joys of Paris and we were sent off into the night for rest.

A few days pass and I find myself at the other great trade awakening. The south of France plays host four times a year to the confluence of brocante fairs at Beziers, Avignon and Montpellier. Each one has probably over a 1000 dealers stalling out their wares and Beziers kicks off with two days of hard sell. Everyone gathers early looking for the bargain that will invigorate and stir up their Autumn trading. The bustle begins at 8 and the hurly-burly of the buyers' hustling and the traders' unpacking ensues for 3 hours and then calm is restored; lunch and culture follows. This pattern is repeated over the next few days at the other venues. Everyone sells and everyone buys and equally everyone complains that business is not what it used to be.

I buy something straight away; it is quite useless but I feel it serves as a symbolic act, you have to start somewhere and the bent, rusty plant stand is like my entry ticket. I can move on from there, and I do. This is not to say I do not fritter away more euros but there are also useful and commercial temptations and I make regular trips to the friendly on-site shippers carrying objects to be wrapped up and trucked over to London.

So, the season has begun, and now I have to knuckle down to the grind of selling - not just the fun of spending money.

Week - 89 - Four Exhibitions and a Dog

 

I have a bad habit. This is that I end up seeing exhibitions as they are on the brink of closing. For some reason I cannot go either at the start or the middle of the run; there has to be an element of drama - I need to be about to miss it. I therefore found myself rushing to see the Matisse cutouts at the Tate Modern, the Folk Art at Tate Britain, the Marina Abramovic at the Serpentine along with the annual pavilion there, as well as a show at the Science Museum by Joshua Sofaer called the Rubbish Collection.

The only downside to the adventure was that I have gone down with a beastly condition called Labyrinthitis. This affliction of the ear renders you off balance and subject to waves of spiraling dizziness that last only a few seconds at a time but have the knack of making you fall over or feel intense nausea, rather like the worst expression of travel sickness.

So off I set careering around both physically and in my head. The blockbuster Matisse show was my first stop. My technique with shows of this sort is to walk through to the end briskly and then saunter back and start again properly. I do this because it is hard to concentrate straight away and the walk through gives me a sense of the scale and therefore how much time and concentration I need to engage. This show was tricky as there were over 10 rooms of work, but the art is very decorative and bold in scale and execution. So it does not encourage close scrutiny. Matisse creat an impression? or an atmosphere. His cutouts seem more about ideas and concepts of shape, colour and mood than they are about individual precise 'paintings'. It was therefore easy to spend a couple of hours soaking up the warmth, wit and energy of the artist's last years and though my head span from time to time, that somehow felt strangely appropriate.

At home we revived ourselves with a mozzarella, tomato and avocado salad arranged on a plate bought recently in France. The long narrow white pottery platter adorned with the bright Southern colours of red, green and the ivory of milky cheese challenged the cold pre-autumnal drizzle out-side and gave a pleasant follow-on from the warmth of Matisse.

Back out again we hurried to the Folk show. The gallery was quiet and virtually empty, except for an earnest looking girl assiduously drawing in a sketch pad and an elderly couple who shouted at length about all the exhibits they looked at; I assumed because their hearing was on the blink. Browsing round I was struck by the easy charm that everything expressed. There were decorative naive items and functional items from shops and the two sat comfortably together. There were only three rooms and there were too many aspects overlooked for the show to be truly authoritative but it was good to see that a friend and Masterpiece exhibitor Robert Young had lent some things as had an ex client from my Mallett days Mona Perlhagen. So I felt connected however spuriously. It was also good to see this show at Tate Britain thereby placing this work at the heart of the British artistic establishment.

Next stop Kensington to visit the Rubbish Collection. I was only seeing the second half of this show. It had begun with a month gathering all the rubbish coming out of the museum . Visitors had helped sort through the effluent and everything including the drains was observed, sorted and noted. In the second half the artist had made beautiful arrangements of the viable stuff and it was located in the back and basement of the museum. It was a very strong, precise and beautiful confluence of randomness; the detritus was fascinating and you left shocked by the waste, and the elegant order in equal measure.

Up the road to Marina Abramovic. She has become the Grand Dame of performance art and having completed a marathon performance at Moma in NY in 2010, where she stared into people's eyes all day for 3 months. She has now let herself in for a show at the Serpentine Galleries called 512 hours. For this period she will interact and instruct her audience. There is no work, just her and the visitors and a few props. It was brave, she could have been on her own bored in the gallery for a long time. Needless to say there was a long queue. This is where Mosca the dog comes in. She is not good at queuing quietly and she immediately made friends with our neighbours by sniffing, nudging and generally looking winsome. She is an addict however and her addiction is pigeons. The park is fill of pigeons and she kept straining on her lead to race off and chase after them. Her eyes narrow and her nose points and there is almost no stopping her. So I left the queue and gave her a canter round. We admired the soon to be removed sculptural piece by the Swiss artists Fischli and Weiss 'Rock on top of Another Rock', thankfully described as an "ironic" work, and then walked over to the equestrian statue by GF watts called 'Physical Energy'. Looking round you can see that the park is a harmonious tapestry of formally arranged art and gardens - down every avenue there is natural or cultural interest. I came back with a slightly less jumpy dog, and luckily no pigeon deaths on my conscience.

Finally we made it into the show leaving Mosca to make friends with other exhibition visitors and the attentive guards. Watches and telephones removed and placed in lockers, headphones worn, we entered the three rooms where the action was taking place. There was a sitting-on-folding-chairs-in-three-rows room, a standing-with-your-eyes-shut-on-a-podium room and a walking-up-and-down-slowly room. Having no technology and almost immediately being asked to stand on the podium and shut my eyes I lost touch with the passage of time. I kept my eyes shut until asked to move and then I sat for a while in a chair. Later I was cross- legged in a corner watching the walking and became mesmerised as the artist entered and led a couple by the hand very slowly and meaningfully across the room. I began to notice that there were subsidiary actions taking place too. The artist went up to people and asked them to perform specific small tasks. Counting rice and sit-ting or standing facing the wall or in a corner were two activities that I observed but there were certainly others I missed. Eventually I left and slipping back into my technology I realised that two hours had gone by rather than the 45 minutes I had anticipated. Needless to say the parking war-dens had taken full advantage of this oversight, but it was worth the fine.

Week - 88 - Buying in France - Sort of.

The joy of the vide grenier is the serendipity of who and what you may encounter. As the locals display their wares along the street you never know whether you will find outgrown children's clothes, works of art, outmoded gardening tools or fresh fruit and vegetable. At Brion-sur-Ource at the weekend I met a man who sold it all. His open-backed estate car poured forth an astonishing display of delights. In the generosity and variety of what he offered he reminded me of thequack doctors selling moonshine or hair tonic in the American West of legend. But he did not look like those quick and smooth-talking salesmen in their top hats and striped trousers. He was of medium stature with short grey hair - cut at number 3, I guess - and clear grey eyes which sparkled and twinkled with amusement and intelligence. Below his bench he had cartons of myrtilles and potatoes, in the midst of which were a couple of discreet small plastic bottles. After a short chat and the purchase of some surprising violet-coloured potatoes he waved the bottle under my nose,'What is this?' he asked. I rocked back - whatever it was it was hugely alcoholic. Many wild guesses later he revealed that it was his home-made cherry spirit, Kirsch. We chatted away and I went on to buy a nearly empty gas cylinder and a broken double gas burner -  why I do not know. I had my reasons at the time. He then asked, sotto voce, if I was interested in buying his probably lethal Kirsch. 'Yes!' I replied eagerly, as much for the cultural experience as for the opportunity of going prematurely blind. I was convinced that my 12 euros were going to make me the proud owner of a recycled half litre Evian water bottle three-quarters full. But no - from the car he pulled a roll of old newspaper and swiftly bundled the contents into my scruffy plastic bag. Pressing a warning finger to his lips,  'Tell no one!' He adjured - if the authorities found out about his still he could face the full weight of the law and he was keen to avoid such eventuality. I gave him my word that not a soul - not even my mother - would know the source of the mysterious home brewed nectar. When I looked carefully at the bottle hours later having got it safely home, I found that the newspaper wrapping was from 2002 and the bottle itself was wax sealed in 1992. I feel certain it will absolutely delicious, but I hardly dare break the seal, it feels very precious.

Next my eye fell on a small wooden crate. It was crammed with little bottles full of sands of different colours and textures. There were some simple small jars of the sort you might keep spices or herbs in, and then there were larger bottles which were once supermarket fruit juice bottles. Each container had a handwritten label with the name of a beach, island or country. Some were domestic and some were exotic. Around twenty holidays were hereby recorded, a synopsis of his life over the last quarter century. What had started as a methodical hobby with special bottles and carefully written labels had descended into hasty scooping of sand into a fruit juice bottle and a cursory scribble. I asked him why he was selling them; his reply was that he just did not have room for them. I did not press him but my guess was that, feeling he felt guilty and self-reproachful about his lazy later plastic bottles he had hidden the whole lot away and now was purging himself of the entire shooting match. I bought them, thinking I would brutally jettison the contents and use the nice jars for their original purpose. But now I own them, I feel oddly protective of this neglected obsession - it tells such a fascinating story.    

Having spent an hour or so immersing myself in the itinerant life of this small-town Renaissance man I walked back to the car with my treasures and spotted a charming naïf painting of a fallow deer leaping over a hedge. It cost considerably more than the 12 euros which still clung on in my pocket so the trader kindly agreed to hold it with a deposit so I could collect later from his house, having replenished my coffers. We drove up to his mill which was beyond ramshackle and for sale. His mother greeted us warmly - too warmly it turned out. She never took a breath for the next hour, the entire length of our stay. Half fascinated, half overwhelmed, we heard about her husband - dearly departed; her daughter - sadly overweight, unlike herself, who had managed to keep her figure. We heard about her childhood as the daughter of a high-ranking officer, and her youth pampered and cared for by a troop of staff. We heard about her adult life in Brussels where she had kept two shops - both very successful. We heard about her genius devoted son whose talent for design was sans pareil and how he had made her a room that was fit for a princess. Accompanied by this stream of autobiography we toured the house which was very much a work in progress but full of touches of real imagination and originality. Each finished room was fashioned out of recycled pieces and cunningly re-employed broken things. It turns out this represents the philosophy of the dealer. He finds the greatest beauty in pieces that are shadows or ghosts of themselves in their pomp. He managed to endow these elements used out of context with a certain magic, akin to the Dadaist perception that a work art could be defined as such by the artists choice to call it so. In the end it was a wrench to leave this place so full of metaphysical objects and the mother who was a Happening in her own right.  

On the way home we stopped at a little market to buy some cheese and saw a little van doing tastings of Crémant (the Burgundian variant on Champagne). The crowd round M. Noirot was jovial as the day was in full swing and many a 'taste' had been imbibed by one and all. We elbowed our way to the counter and the maestro swung into action. Tasting his 'a manuel' and his 'a machine' rosé traditionelle, and blanc de blancs. We were already in a festive mood and the smooth talk and smoother Crémant inspired us to believe that we had never tasted anything better. A purchase was made and 12 bottles added to our motley assortment in the car. Finally, shopping completed, we were tempted away from a kitchen lunch to the local cafe-restaurant of Marie-Lou. For 37 years she has been serving a 'menu'. Her husband has passed on and a local helps her do the lunchtime shift, but she still cooks and serves. Bent over with work and age she beetles around the tables at high speed providing us with smooth, duck liver pâté enrobed in yellow fat and a basket of discs of delicious fresh baguette. Then comes a perfect steak-frites, a grill-lined surface with succulent pink meat within, and a lovely trail of blood to help usher the chips down our throats. A carafe ofchilled rosé de Provence is completed with the last mouthful of île flottante and the day is about done. Until tomorrow that is.  

Week - 87 - Bruton and Chard, Art and Black Pudding

 

Bruton in Somerset seems always to have been an 'arty' town. There are lots of young folk about because the town has a number of schools. There is the legendary Sexey's which is a Church of England co-ed state boarding school and the starting point of many lewd - and too often repeated - jokes. Then there is Bruton School for Girls and King's Bruton as well as a primary school. This means that a broad cross-section of society has taken up residence in and around the town. There is the expected and usual contingent of indigenous and retired country people but there is also a buoyant community of 'Yummy Mummies', Chelsea tractors and the owners of loud voices thronging the high street. Of course, the tractors are genuinely at home here but that seems almost to be by accident. Some dear friends of mine live here too, who used to live in Stockwell. They moved out in order to return Richard to his roots, whilst Helena, who is a successful writer, can work anywhere. For some years Richard was the leading light in Bruton's contemporary art scene :he had run a gallery in London but having moved to the country he concentrated on developing his own conceptual work and painting... but then it all changed. Hauser & Wirth came, saw and conquered. The company is one of the big dogs in the global contemporary art scene. Their residency began when the owners bought a weekend house there, and then they set up a few artists' retreat spaces and a restaurant. The restaurant is a very successful, award-winning one called 'At The Chapel' unexpectedly not dog-friendly, despite the fact that in the country so many people have dogs, including the gallery principals - or so I am told - and the internal space is so open and airy that friendly hounds could be easily accommodated. They have now gone maximal by buying and redeveloping Durslade Farm to be a gallery complex. It is possibly this is the herald of or an expression of a change in the trade. Whilst the farm/gallery will attract many local visitors one suspects that the majority of the business will be done via the virtual world and mainly deal-closing is likely to be accomplished on site. Therefore this is an upscale warehouse - a hub, a bucolic centre of operations and not a straightforward selling space. Within the development everything has been made immaculate. There is something very Continental about the detail of what has been accomplished there; it is hard to describe exactly what that means but it relates to the fact that though they have obviously taken huge care to be sensitive culturally and historically in all they have done, the end result lacks the amateurish ramshackle nature you always encounter with an English project. This place is perfect - perhaps even a little cold - and that makes it strangely un-English.

It is a very exciting thing for the locals to have a thriving art gallery in their midst and it is the buzz of the town, and beyond. The car park at the new gallery complex is crowded as we drive in and you immediately get the sense and scale of visiting a publicly-funded gallery or house. There is also a sense of shock and surprise as you approach, as from afar you spot a giant shiny bucket and neon writing on the walls of the farmhouse.

Walking in and directed by a London-style gallery assistant I embark on a wander around the beautifully appointed circuit of buildings and admire the playful though thoughtful work of the artist Phyllida Barlow. I then saw the wonderful, wild, boldly colourful but controlled garden being installed by Piet Oudolf, and now nearly ready. I took a break and sat under a canopy to drink a superb Bloody Mary - spicy, cold, super-fresh tasting and enhanced with a splash of sherry, provided by the Roth Bar & Grill. The bar itself is a fantasy of salvage by the artist team Bjorn and Oddur Roth; it has a controlled chaos to it that was for me the perfect backdrop for a bar - a space where calm and mayhem are natural bedfellows.

It was really inspiring to visit the Hauser & Wirth project because they are obviously committed both to Bruton and to offering an inclusive and nurturing experience for their artists and visitors. Eventually, feeling nurtured, we had to leave and head west to a part of Somerset that has not been touched by this magic wand. Though we had consumed an afternoon cocktail, food had not played a part in the day as yet and as we drove back home through the town of Chard we were inspired to drop in on the Portuguese restaurant-cafe in the high street. Still aglow with Bruton glamour and style a slight feeling of negative anticipation washed over me as we entered Saraiva's. Two men with scrappy beards and baseball caps were talking loudly in Portuguese, leaning on a high glass counter and drinking beer from bottles, accompanied by strange pastries - presumably members of the relatively new Portuguese community which has grown up around Chard's factories, which produce food and Henry hoovers. We seemed to have passed through a magic portal into a foreign land. The sense that we were fish out of water soon passed though as the owner and the two drinkers got together to both welcome us and work out what we might like to eat. We were ushered to the back room where brightly varnished chairs and tables and the melodious bubbling of a vast aquarium awaited us. There we were brought classic grainy deep black coffee and what were like calzone pizzas filled with ham and melted cheese. We wolfed these down delighted in equal measure by both the unfamiliarity and the taste. Leaving happy, our sugar levels restored, we espied some black pudding and swiftly bought it. They call it 'Morcilla' and it differs from the English version in that it contains rice and much more spice. That night we feasted on this delicacy, together with calves liver, red onions and crispy wedges of potato. It was all good but the Morcilla stole the show.

Sitting back wiping meat juices from my mouth I reflected on the contrasts of the day. Durslade Farm, according to the blurb provided, has been a model but working farm for over 1000 years. In addition the new owners are creating a farm shop which will offer organic produce made there. The art that they are presenting is at the very forefront of modernity and yet through a combination of the setting and the connection with the town and its community there is an arc joining the past with a very contemporary vision of the present. Impressive though this is there is also something perhaps even more marvellous to celebrate. A few miles away in Chard the multicultural nature of Britain today expresses itself in a culinary triumph. Here it is appreciated and valued differently, but it is just as good somehow just as innovative as the Bruton creative, a twist on the norm or the expected. But this is poor Somerset, the other is rich and privileged - and they both have much to say and to offer. It is not a question of better or worse simply a microcosm of diversity.

All images blogger's own

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Week - 86 - Another sort of show

After the fandango of Masterpiece you might think that I would avoid any sort of tented show. But I found myself inextricably drawn into the web of the Wambrook Flower Show. It was celebrating its 100th anniversary. Masterpiece is only 5 years old. So I embarked on this visit with a sense of respect for their history. But immediate adjustments were necessary. At our show we sell 'stands' (though what our American dealers buy are 'booths'); I am used to this terminology and inadvertently, almost on autopilot, I focus in on the 'stand' as I walked in: the 'guess how many logs are in this huge sack for £1' was the first thing I saw. However, the large man sitting in a folding aluminium chair beside the huge sack was guarding the 'stall'. There is a status issue here - the stall is the humble country cousin of the other two. Here is a chalk board and a folding chair and the worrying possibility that if I correctly guessed how many logs were in the sack I would have to find a way of getting them all home. There is almost no comparison to the luxurious offerings in London and yet there it is - the juxtaposition is there. I paid my pound and offered 137 as a random option. It turned out that the correct answer was 342, thank goodness! On past the logs and through an arch into a courtyard with a barn at one end. The lady organisers of the Flower Show were controlling the tea and cakes - no coffee. Or rather a spoonful of 'instant' with tepid water from the samovar was an option, but not one to be taken seriously. Tea and cakes successfully accomplished I moved into the body of the show. In my mind I saw echoes of our sponsors and partners corridor before the glamorous shock of entering the the main arena. Here a folk and country band was playing before a horseshoe of stalls offering a panoply of country and local options. Advice on soil quality - or Wambrook Flower Show tea towels. There was a jovial fellow in a floppy white hat offering for £1 the option of writing my name on a card and putting it in his bucket. At the end of the day a card would be drawn and the name would win half the money. Sounded like fun so he got a £1 too. Then the raffle and the tombola got their dues from me. Walking between the two sides of the horseshoe I was reminded of the Charge of the Light Brigade facing the Turkish guns in the Crimea. I did not stand a chance either, but leaping the cannons at the end I did make it into the barn to admire the flowers, vegetables and handicrafts.

Here the arrangements of 'gardens on a plate or tray' caught my attention as they were either perfunctory or intensely detailed. One even had a miniature tarpaulin covered with miniature tyres in a lego farmyard; no doubt there is one behind the farm on which the young artist lives. Certain exhibits were impressive, others were not. I was very impressed by the number of entrants to the bucket of compost category. I was unimpressed by the fathers and sons baking competition. You have rarely seen a larger collection of almost flat, brick-like, unappetising loaves. The courgettes and green bean displays were oddly compelling as were the rows of eggs, each one with an egg broken onto a saucer to show the limpid white and pert yolk. One egg had a small white blemish on the yolk and was completely out of the prizes, almost a pariah. But almost everyone seemed to be a prize winner of one sort or another. At the end of the day there was a lengthy prize giving ceremony where the locals whooped or wept over the results. What was new to me was the discovery that if you win several prizes in any given category you qualify for a cup. So there were winners and furthermore cup winners. Many children won prizes for drawings or for finding stinging nettles of unfeasible size. They all received little brown prize envelopes heavy with 50p pieces. As they walked up beaming with pride and local celebrity they glowed with excitement. It was lovely to watch. Having thankfully won nothing but now being the proud owner of various chutneys, jams and a ceremonial tea towel I left Wambrook a wiser man.  

Back in London I spent invigorating 15 hours at 'Little House' by Curzon St. I was there for more than 'all day', beginning at breakfast time and finally leaving around midnight. The staff were amused to see me shift around during the day. The place consists only two main rooms and these fashion three spaces. There is a sitting area, a bar and a restaurant. Breakfast - really several double espressos - was taken in the company of my friend Jordi, a hugely enthusiastic and ambitious sculpture and paintings dealer. He wants to create a brand and we were strategising about how I might help him achieve that. It is invigorating talking to people who have so much energy and optimism. He is fashionably bearded and does not sit still, at only 35 years old I would be amazed if he does not become the 'brand' he wants to be. It will certainly not be for want of effort. There follows a short pause and I move to the restaurant for lunch. Here I am joined by Philip who is also full of ideas and creativity about how to inject more cash into the art world. He wants to build a fund to help dealers buy collections. This sort of financial service could provide a genuine alternative to those wishing to selling groups of pieces, the dealer can compete with an auction house. He is a keen competitive sailor and that acts as a indicator of his attitude to risk, he is not reckless but he wants and needs risk. We eat sensibly and drink modestly but I notice that the Butterscotch Delight is back on the menu and I try the test out on him. He is thin and energetic and though he can resist the temptation of the carafe of delicious Gavi de Gavi he cannot resist sharing the nostalgic pudding with its bitter sweet crunchy caramel biscuit topping its lush foamy brownness. Again, there is the chance that we might work on a project together. He leaves and I take a walk around the block for fresh air, and to admire the summer around Berkeley Square. Returning, I ensconce myself in my favourite corner at a round table close to an open window and pass an hour or so playing with my ipad, ostensibly sending and answering a few emails, but actually trying to look busy before my friends Jane and Philip arrive. Jane is head of Christie's education and Philip is in charge of a business called the Map House - no need to explain what they sell. I have known these two for just shy of 30 years: we used to meet on Monday nights at Christies South Ken, where we would view the sales before gathering at the now defunct Luigi Malone's next door. We would drink and gossip, and Luigi himself would on occasion bring round grilled chipolatas or a tray of Potcheen shots fresh from the potato field. Occasionally we would discuss business. This evening our families and holidays are discussed and we manage to consume a few strong drinks - a bracing Aperol Spritz followed by more sensible but equally delicious Picpoul de Pinet. The sun sets and we are feeling quite mellow as my sons Vladimir and Inigo arrive. They are both in holiday mode as school and university terms have been over for a while and they are now in the full swing of summer. We finish the evening and my day at Little House with succulent grilled meat accompanied by salty, oily chips and warm spinach doused in lemon juice and olive oil. I have had a day of planning and adventure; I have met with my past, andI end with hope and expectation for a future outside of my control - my children!

Week - 85 - The Dangerous Roads of London and the West Country

 

As the Tour de France surges forward and the occasional pile-up is reported in the English news, so the domestic daily version of this annual gladiatorial struggle invades my experience. I have had to attend various morning meetings and therefore I have been compelled to travel with the commuters. Every day during rush hour cyclists herd and jostle at every traffic light and push off in a fashion more akin to Brownian motion than the order of Newton. It is not only an homage to the Tour but in parallel it provides an outlet for the English obsession with fancy dress. Nearly every cyclist has his or her particular outfit. Lycra plays a leading role in this drama along with a solid dis-regard for looking nice - and an unfortunate ignorance of their garb's transparency when stretched. Seemingly everyone is taking part in a race as they wear branded sports clothing and a confusing array of tight fitting outfits. Cars are expected to line up, one behind another, and at traffic lights they wait patiently for a comforting and encouraging green light to usher them on their way. No such convention applies for the peloton hovering at the lights. Some balance rocking backwards and forwards with their arms and legs contorted on their 'fixies', others ride their bicycles onto the pavement and cycle on, still others ignore the interdiction offered by a red light completely. As a cyclist you never know from which side a fellow competitor may approach. Rush hour in London on a bicycle is chaos, and quite a challenge.

Nonetheless it is the only way to travel in the city, cars cost a fortune and public transport is fine unless you have an appointment, in which case it is just not reliable enough due to cancellations and traffic. Astride a bicycle you have the freedom of the road and barring punctures a guaranteed arrival time. A day on the road returns you home throbbing with a sense of the Roman ideal of 'Mens sana in corpore sano'. Both your body and your mind have been stretched and are in harmony.

Some may question the safety of riding a bicycle in London, but for me the least safe place to travel is by car on country roads. The local denizens hurtle along narrow lanes with high bushy hedges on both sides.

They force you to drive off the road or into a hedge to avoid a collision. This happens several times an hour and is very wearing, every blind corner brings hot fear and cold sweat as the next bucolic racing driver may be just around the corner. I am spending time reconnoitering in Honiton and at the antiques centre at Exeter airport. The former is a pretty village in Devon famed for its numerous antique shops - the town's website proudly announces that there are over 20 - the shops are all arranged along the high st, At one end there is the BADA member Roderick Butler, who has a very pretty, perfectly manicured stone house and garden with his shop located in a barn beside it. I walk in looking very scruffy. The older gentleman manning the shop looks up disconsolately from his newspaper. I don't think it is Mr Butler himself, this man has the air of a Dickensian clerk, tall, thin wispy haired and in my imagination bowed by years of unrecognised servitude. He proffers access to the two showrooms, 'Fine furniture' or 'Oak and Walnut'. A few minutes suffice to cast an eye round the rooms, the stock is well presented and all worthy but there is nothing here for me. I give thanks and bid my host farewell.

As I make my progress along the street I find my attention being drawn to the appetising looking savoury pie shop, the butcher, the fishmonger etc. I cannot seem to get inspired by any of the so-called antiques I see. The shops increasingly become a blur as each one is visited and offers tiny room after tiny room crammed with small objects. The staff types vary from loud large women smoking to skinny, worried, silent and slightly sullen looking boys and all points in between.

One shop has devoted itself to becoming a pink boudoir full of dolls, children's furniture and dummies dressed in vintage costume. Lace parasols punctuate each room, and little notices helpfully guiding ones taste are positioned around judiciously. I exit as swiftly as is seemly. In the end I buy a few pies and some dressed crab and head on to Exeter.

On my way I am pulled over by the police. They ask me if I will participate in a survey. As I am not being arrested for a transgression I am only too delighted to oblige. A young man comes over. Question 1: Could I have the postcode of the place I have come from? Answer: Um - sorry I don't know, but it's in a village called Buckland St Mary. The questioner looks disappointed and embarrassed on my behalf but presses on with Question 2: Could I have the postcode of the place you are going to? Answer: Um - sorry I don't know. Somewhere near Exeter airport. Questioner looks shocked but scribbles something down. Question 3: Did you know that this is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty? He says this with a weary disappointed air, as if my failure to suitably answer the previous two questions clearly indicate that I would not have a clue about the fact that this in area described with capital letters. I answer, Yes, as brightly as I can; trying to compensate for my earlier inadequacy, but actually lying to boot! Of course, I realise that the region is lovely lush and rolling, but I was not aware that it had a certificate to prove it. I get a desultory 'Okay and am sent on my way more confused than anything else.

Just beyond the main entrance to Exeter airport are a group of warehouses full of furniture and objects for sale. An enterprising group - in recognition of both their proximity to the airport and the paucity of antiques buyers - they have sublet their accumulated parking spaces as low cost long term parking for holiday makers. Visiting these shops is quite surreal as the approach is interrupted by a parade of people pulling heavy luggage over the uneven road surfaces. Families bickering after a long car journey lend a strange backdrop to the old school dealing within the sheds. This is how it used to be. Large quantities of 'stuff', no sense of arrangement or scholarship, this is what used to be called 'shipping goods'. In the past dealers from the USA would call by and fill containers for onward shipment, buying 20 or 30 items at a time from a favoured few and when the container was full it would be shipped and emptied and the hungry trade would return for more. In the hey day of this sort of dealing the successful would fill three or more containers a year. Those days are long gone but the style persists in little pockets though these become fewer and fewer each year. They are dinosaurs aware of their imminent extinction. But it is fun to walk round and there are opportunities amid the hurly burly. I pass a comfortable hour browsing and pondering who I could find to buy a late 19th century octagonal table by Jackson and Graham or a Yew wood drop leaf table from the mid 18th century. I end up not buying anything but I can see that in time an opportunity will present itself. Along the way I was very pleased to be reminded of one of my favourite catalogue entries. I saw once a lot described as: Two stuffed crocodiles - one wired for electricity. Sitting on a table there by Exeter airport was a wired for electricity crocodile, perhaps even the same one!

I drive back avoiding, as far as possible, small roads thinking about where I might go next for shopping opportunities in Somerset and its neighbouring counties.

Week - 84 - Season Finale

The dust is rising as the last few struts are removed and packed up for onward travel,The Dutch are licking their wounds following another World Cup penalty shoot-out failure, and a disconsolate mood hangs over the dry bare ground revealed by the vanished Masterpiece 'Evolution' tent like a miasma. Elsewhere the last throw of the dice is being prepared. The Christie's and Sotheby's decorative arts departments are presenting sales - in one case "Treasures" and in the other "Exceptional": they have both previously had a go at titles which reference Masterpiece but this year they are baulking at such obvious coat-tail attachment. The writing has been on the wall for some time with regard to the status of these departments at the two Leviathan of auctioneering. Since contemporary and post-war sales have begun to nudge towards a billion dollars for their key weeks and a decorative arts sale can only generate a measly few million, the result is that the latter have been be relegated to the dog end of the season. This year the fancy sales have are in the second week in July, a point when the smart crowd have already left for their holidays. This ignominy is not reserved for those struggling to sell furniture and sculpture but has trickled down to the OMP (Old Master Paintings, everything has an acronym these days ) too. When we started Masterpiece we were put under huge pressure to move our dates earlier to the traditional slot for fairs at the beginning of June. This year I was collared by a number of dealers from England and Europe wanting us to move the show on into the middle of July. How times have changed!

Off to the salerooms, at Sotheby's there is the Northumberland collection to enrich the sales. They are selling around 80 lots during 2014 to raise funds following disastrous flood damage around a block of flats in Newcastle and the subsequent costly repairs: a selection has been made from Alnwick and from Syon. I am put in mind of the film Toy Story III, a tale in which once loved and cherished toys are sent off to a new life. The chosen Northumberland pieces, had they similarly come to life, must have felt very sad - not worthy of being retained after such long and loyal service. These lots are garnishing a number of sales throughout the year, where in the old days there would have been a single-owner sale and a big catalogue full of biography and architectural background. Now, Clive Aslet (editor-at-large for Country Life ) has written a piece for the Sotheby's magazine and that's that. At Christie's they just have to make do with their traditional methods of business getting, having no single name to enhance or bolster interest. Nonetheless, when the gavel finally falls on the last lots Christie's has achieved a total around £31 million whilst Sotheby's trails at £23.5 million. My figures are rounded as I cannot be doing with long numbers and decimal points. The totals are quite impressive, of course, but we are talking about 100 lots spread over two sales and items representing a range of styles, periods and disciplines. At Masterpiece we had 160-odd stands and each one had around 100 pieces, -some many more, some a few less, but it is a fair broad-brush figure. We are looking at in excess of 16,000 items available for examination, discussion and sale. It is no wonder that fairs are making such a big impact on the market.

For a few days and for a last gasp of the season, however, the salerooms draw in the local and interested crowds. Pieces are taken apart and pored over and the buzz of enthusiasm gives the viewing days a very infectious energy. It is also a delightful opportunity to meet and chat with friends and colleagues. I went through Sotheby's very fast but not without meeting Joao Magalaes, my erstwhile colleague from Mallett with the unpronounceable Portuguese name. A direct descendant of Magellan, the early 16th-century circumnavigator, he is now a key figure in the furniture department. But that is not my main interest. He and his feisty and wonderful wife - who has been re-christened Zinha by Joao - have had a baby. The child is fresh into the world and whilst he is keen to guide me towards a rare automaton clock what engages me is excitedly finding out how mother and baby are getting on.

Friday evening is filled by catching the end of the William Kent show at the V&A. The museum stays open until 9.30 pm on Fridays and it is amazing to see how the galleries throb with people at this unusual hour. I pass through and stand in awe before the fantasy and imagination of Kent. He resides in my memory as being the symbol of the British Baroque. This is my furniture bias speaking, were I an architecture buff I would be rhapsodising about Palladio, and various houses stand out- Chiswick, Houghton and Holkham to name but three. His work epitomises the rich Italianate style of the early 18th century, but here on show is more than that grandeur. For me the great revelation was Kent's whimsy and charm - time and again he filled his designs and drawings with bonkers details that both leaven and enhance the more serious and more familiar side of his work. The exhibition captures and expresses briefly the important details, and brings out his astonishing versatility. It was an excellent exhibition but perhaps we could have been spared the sound effects of birds tweeting when we were admiring his garden pieces; I have to surmise that curators have no faith in our ability to recognise or imagine the setting a piece might have been intended for.

On Sunday an eccentric outing. Some friends from Germany had booked tickets for Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne. The problem was that Germany had made it to the final of the World Cup, and the events were now clashing. They have two sons who love them very much but were not prepared to sacrifice the World Cup final. So, during the long interval following Act I the boys were to gobble down a delicious picnic, gargle a few glasses of champagne and head by taxi and train to London and a German-themed pub where they were planning to see in victory accompanied by their compatriots and a few steins. This is where I came in as I was invited to attend the picnic and use the second half tickets - so to speak. Sitting in the foyer watching the first half had its charm and the music poured through the walls lending a soundtrack to the attractive fresh faced young waiting folk who were bustling about preparing for the onslaught of the interval. There were jokes and broken glasses and a considerable amount of flirting as Don Giovanni made his way towards his nemesis via murder, parties and attempted seduction. The interval was announced by on-stage pyrotechnics which I enjoyed on the foyer's TV screen. Then the picnic, the boys rushed off, and we installed ourselves in glory in their warm seats, which were magnificent. The great man sang his way into hell and we trooped out thrilled. Leaving the theatre I ran into an old client of mine who briefly and shockingly told me of the death and forthcoming funeral of Ina Lindemann. Ina was a kind generous and supremely gentle designer-decorator who I had worked with via Mallett for the last 20 years. I knew she had been struck down with cancer but I had thought she was in remission. It took my breath and good spirits away to hear of her death. There are many ruthless brutal people in this business for whom few would weep, but Ina was without doubt one of the good guys. The world I work in is much the poorer for her loss. I was speechless for a while and my friends were puzzled by my sudden lugubriousness. But the sun set picturesquely as we began the drive back to London and my mood lifted. Our discussion of the performance was punctuated by updates from the boys on the progress of the match. Just as London hove into view we learned that Germany were the World Champions. It was an amazing evening. German and Italian and Glyndebourne itself, a sort of fantasy quintessence of Englishness. A night to remember and cherish despite the loss of dear Ina.

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