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The choices about what furniture to take to the Winter Show feels a tad momentous. For example, I have furniture that I have owned for twenty years that is just as good as when I purchased it, but it doesn't feel quite as zingy to me as it did when I purchased it. I fear that this lack of zing will translate to any potential buyer and kill sales. This is partly in my mind, but there is an aura to things that haven't sold. How do you dispel that aura? It is the question that every dealer has about their goods--those items, it's usually quite a few--that you would buy again in a heartbeat that somehow have lost their luster? It is probably the best reason for hiring a salesperson who has no idea about how long something has been around. A well known dealer in New Orleans has advertised one piece by Thomas Chippendale furniture for years and years and when I visited their shop, they were very proud of it--no aura, no shame, just unalloyed pride. The one documented piece of Chippendale that I owned (in half shares) was a piece that I thought would sell right away on the Chippendale name and irrefutable provenance to the year and house it was made for, but it didn't. And I grew a tad suspicious that I might never sell it--the curse of inventory that you think should fly out the window and it doesn't.
Old inventory is seen by some as failure which it most certainly isn't. As I say, I would buy the items that I have in inventory again, given the chance. But that is not what shows or fairs are about. You're there to surprise people with items that you have found that people have never seen before. In itself, unearthing items of distinct interest is very hard to do. I will have on my stand this year a sofa table. Sofa tables have fallen out of fashion in ways that are hard to believe, given that they are enormously useful tables behind sofas or even free standing in a library to use as a desk. So, in order to show a sofa table, at least in my opinion, it has to be really great. The one I am bringing evokes George Bullock and it may be by George Bullock or one of his disciples. Bullock was a sculptor who got into the furniture business when he was in his middle twenties--he died at age 41--but he is remembered, as I cited a few blogs ago, for his artistry with neo-classical, Elizabethan and Grecian influenced design and his wide ranging use of timbers. Will this item have the zing for my booth that I want it to have? I can't know, but it is an amazing looking table that has a distinct character.
Furniture that really sings loudly enough to cry out to be purchased is extraordinarily rare. Dealers know it when they see it and that is part of the problem because we all want it. I wrote about a sideboard last year by a firm called Wilkinson from Guildford, Surrey whose work was always first rate. The zing of those sideboards is history, at least for me, not that they aren't still great quality items, they just aren't sellers these days. And this is the dilemma--divining what sells, divining what will turn someone's head enough to register and create interest and, of course, it has to appeal to me. Another item I am bringing to the show is a games table made of cocus wood. As it happens, a dealer in England has the pair to it. Should I have made the effort to bring it over and show what would be quite a rarity--a pair of games tables in exotic timber? These are the questions and the choices that we all face before going into a show and they can make the difference between a successful (selling) fair or not. But, it should be remembered, what would have been a rarity once, might educe just yawns today. The process is a little like skating on a knife's edge as falling over can be quite hazardous to your business.
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