Over ten years ago years ago, I made the transition from auction house ‘expert’ to antiques dealer. And it came as a rude shock. Nothing like a healthy dose of comeuppance; deference vanished overnight.
Auction houses are open to the public for consultation, even the grander ones in London’s West End; or that is how it was in the early 2000s. Back then, anyone could turn up (without an appointment) and ring a buzzer on the front counter. And, as an auction specialist, you played the part. Keep ‘em waiting for ten minutes, then a star-like descent down to reception, where a forelock-tugging hopeful awaited with Tesco bag and fake Fabergé frog in ‘resin’ — a useful auction house term to describe plastic.
In comparison, my first antiques fair was to be met with a wall of mistrust and suspicion — expensively dressed punters demanding instant eye-watering discounts, as if I had bought my stock for a pittance. Which I hadn’t. But then, perhaps, antiques dealers have had a less-than-flattering press. In Agatha Christie’s Peril at End House (1932), Jim Lazarus, a Bond Street art dealer, deliberately overvalues a second division painting to buy a rarity at considerably less than the market price. And in Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999), Johnny Depp’s dubious book runner, Dean Corso, plays a similar trick, ripping off a naive, well-heeled couple, to acquire a rare 18th-century edition of Don Quixote for a paltry sum.
And then, of course, we have Lovejoy — the loveable rogue with the ‘eart of gold, a leather-jacketed chancer and walking advertisement for the mullet. In contrast, a 2020 television adaptation of The Pale Horse (Dame Agatha, again) portrayed high-end antiques dealer, Mark Easterbrook (Rufus Sewell) as some sort of lounge lizard languishing at the back of his glitzy Mayfair gallery, a Lagonda-driving connoisseur with a penchant for Chinese Ancestor portraits. Shady or suave. Take your pick.
And that’s another thing. The concept of the ‘connoisseur’. Once a stalwart of Sunday Colour Supplement advertising, this has now been devalued, or at the very least, it’s seriously out of fashion. Take Going for a Song (1965-1977), the popular BBC1 game show. Every week, the avuncular Arthur Negus — he with the exceedingly good voice — pitted his wits against a panel of desperately plummy experts and the latest Staffordshire-collecting luvvie. Their in-depth discussions held the nation gripped as they agonised over the provenance of a 17th-century Tompion clock, the fine detailing of a Han Dynasty bronze, or the complexities of a dodgy Regency hallmark. But then, back in the good old days of Swinging London, antiques were a seriously hot property. From Sharon Tate, snapped by the paparazzi shopping for Victorian oil lamps in the New King’s Road to Des O’ Connor’s Dick-A-Dum-Dum (1969) — ‘Gotta sorta sell a little old antique or two/Blow it all on a Savile Row suit’ — a witty little ditty which reached Number 14 in the Hit Parade.
For whatever their position on the antiques ladder, a dealer is in the grubby business of buying and selling
And, at the same time, there was an obsession with Chinese antiques, perceived by the public as rare and valuable, when in reality, the dynasty mark on Granny’s turquoise-glazed Dog of Fo read ‘Made in Hong Kong’. In Day of Reckoning (1994), Lovejoy buys, I quote, ‘A Fine and Rare Late 19th Century Ivory Chinese Chess Set: There hasn’t been one like it on the market since 1965’ for 12,000 smackers, when, actually, it’s a bog-standard early 19th century Cantonese Export set, made in their many, many thousands, and worth back then, in the region of £200-300 — on a sunny day.
Today, of course, we still have The Antiques Roadshow, but the programme, perhaps, is now more about the rhino, even if the participants pretend not to care: ‘sentimental value only’, the expert’s euphemism for a pile of dog do. It’s all so marvellously patronising. But then, the antiques trade has always been secretive, and, from the general public’s point of view, enigmatic.
For whatever their position on the antiques ladder, a dealer is in the grubby business of buying and selling. From Bond Street to the Back of a Van. That is what they do. As a fine art auctioneer is an agent, then an antiques dealer tends to own their own stock, although a dealer might also sell on commission. And a dealer is a gambler, requiring considerable guts — to put your money where your mouth is. To buy an object with your own dosh, and to hope that it’s good enough to sell on at a higher price. Despite the mystery, the secrecy and the illusion, it’s as simple as that.
And dealers work incredibly hard. At a well-known West London antiques fair, sensing a new kid on the block, a celebrity antiques dealer gave me a deserved bollocking for abandoning my stand. He had a point. Every second lost is a missed opportunity. No time for coffee. But then I wouldn’t have it any other way. For many dealers, unemployable elsewhere, antiques are the only option. Give me an 18th-century reverse glass mezzotint or a 21st-century corporate committee, and the choice isn’t difficult. I know which side I’m on.
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