|
The single most difficult task in selling English antique furniture is in giving the client an accurate portrayal of just how good, or lacking, a piece of furniture might be. The existential question is why would you sell anything that needed to be qualified in the first place--isn't everything one sells the best of the best? It is a good question and it is the type of question that should be asked by any potential client. But then there is the difficult part for any buyer to understand--the years of experience that a dealer draws on to evaluate a piece--none of which can be conjured up or easily explained no matter how many photographs you can show of similar pieces. The dealer has to play a kind of chess hoping that the buyer understands the moves he is making as he sacrifices perfection by explaining existing flaws, and then going on offense to explain the strengths of what they are looking at. Every piece is different after all.
The best example I can give of this kind of work relates to the selling of items of which there are multiples. Dining tables, for example, have many forms and shapes, different heights and widths, better or worse condition, most made in mahogany but of many distinctly different mahoganies cut in ways to show the grain to advantage (or not) and, yes, finally it has to fit in the buyers space. These particulars matter a great deal. The price can range from quite modest to very expensive based on these assessments. The truly great tables will have great color and grain, something dealers recognize right away, be clean underneath without alterations, be relatively flat with leaves to extend the table, and be between 27.5" and 29" high. Seems pretty simple. It isn't, as so many tables have been modified--most to be made to look as if they were made in the 1780-90 period, when in fact many were made in the 1800-40 period. It is complicated.
If you don't have experience with any of this, how do you know what you are looking at? The simple answer is that you don't, even if you have looked at ten dining tables a day for ten days straight. The process of learning what is good, better or best, is most often a dealer's process and, to a lesser extent, the connoisseur's process. Yes, there are collectors who know the difference just as well as dealers, but they are few. But the chess game is played between the dealer and the ingenue and is designed to guide them in a direction where they understand just where the piece that they are looking at rests within the multiples of those particular items. People who say they want the very best will find the game frustrating. People who understand that they are learning something will enjoy the process. It isn't simple and it isn't quick, but it can be enjoyable--even fascinating as you learn to identify quality. This is what dealers do.
|
