Where Eclectic Collectors Hunt for Treasures
Interior designer Dale Engelson never expected her clients would swoon over a pair of copper urns at the Los Angeles Antiques Show; after all, they were on the hunt for an English low chest. Another client searching for a side table to match a chair ended up with a gilt framed wall mirror. And a couple who unexpectedly fell head over heels for a Tang Dynasty horse a few years ago are still reveling in their find.
Such serendipitous discoveries seem to define the annual L.A. Antiques Show, which opens to the public Friday at Santa Monica Airport’s Barker Hangar. Now in its seventh year, this is the ultimate flea market for shoppers with deep pockets, sophisticated tastes and, perhaps, a decorator in tow. A John Singer Sargent painting will be there, alongside an Art Deco cocktail shaker, early American mourning jewelry and an antique American weathervane, to name just a few items. This eclectic mix reflects this city’s A to Z tastes and sets the show apart from other antique markets around the country, where regional aesthetics, sensibilities and lifestyles often dictate more homogenized slates of merchandise, leaving little room for the unexpected discovery.
“A lot of shows in other major cities have a great deal of pricey antiques and sort of stuffy antiques, and that doesn’t work here,” says Engelson, owner of the L.A. decorating firm DesignWorks. “It’s not that they’re not beautiful, but they’re very precious, and they don’t really fit our lifestyle. There are some wonderful antiques at this show, but there are also a lot of fun pieces, too, like Americana or country antiques. You feel you can put them just about anywhere. Our clients are really comfortable with that. I don’t think anyone in L.A. wants a room that looks like an interior designer put their stamp on it.”
“Los Angeles likes dramatic furniture,” says interior designer Thomas Beeton of Thomas Beeton and Associates in West Hollywood. It’s the same boldness that attracts mavericks to the city. “The show has a lot of unusual objects, pieces that have an unusual quirk. They’re pieces of sculpture that happen to be furniture. People are drawn to objects that have power.” Standouts from past shows, he recalls, include an 18th century Spanish Colonial table found in Peru that Beeton describes as “an exuberant combination of gilt and color and scale. It was the most unique painted piece of South American furniture I had ever seen.”
Beeton says his clients are “generally” looking for Italian, French and Irish furniture from the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th century, in addition to Swedish and Baltic pieces. “They all like scale, and gutsy pieces,” he explains. “But my clients don’t want things to look as if they take themselves too seriously. Last year a client bought a beautiful pair of bronze Modernist tables from the 1960s and set them next to a 1910 China trade settee. The show is about this idea of assembling an interior. I love the Winter Antiques show in New York, but it really is a museum with price tags. There are plenty of people here who can afford those pieces, but the presentation here is more off the cuff, yet elegantly done.”
About 66 dealers are expected this year, and everything has been authenticated by a panel of experts. The show officially kicks off tonight with a $250-a-person gala preview party benefiting the Women’s Guild of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which co-sponsors the show with the Antiques Dealers Assn. of California, or ADAC, and ends Sunday. Events also include a lecture series, and on Wednesday there was a preview for interior designers.
The L.A. Antiques Show isn’t L.A.’s first major charity-aligned show of its kind. The Los Angeles Junior League hosted an annual antiques show from 1979 to 1988. But a sagging economy, as well as location problems, ended it. Nothing comparable took its place until 1996, when California antique dealers felt “it was time we got involved with something bigger than an annual dinner,” says show co-founder Daniel Stein of Daniel Stein Antiques Inc. in San Francisco. (San Francisco has its own Fall Antiques show, but ADAC only organizes the authentication of objects for the show.)
Fans of the event, who include serious collectors and buyers, just-lookings and baseball-capped celebrities, say the ability to find a variety of things in a day’s stroll is what draws them. “I have clients who have incredible modern art collections, but they couple it with very classic, clean-lined 18th century furniture,” says Sally Gould Wright, co-owner of Richard Gould Antiques in L.A., a second-generation dealer of 18th and 19th century English and American decorative arts, and president of ADAC. “I think in the ‘90s, and into the 21st century, eclecticism is much further ranging than it used to be.”
L.A’s reputation as a trend-conscious city is reflected not only in its taste for clothes, cars and cappuccinos, but in antiques as well. In 1996, the rage was for Art Deco portraits by Tamara De Lempicka, collected by Jack Nicholson and Madonna. “There are styles in collecting, just as there are fads in fashion,” says Wright, who adds that she’s seen more interest in recent years in Deco, from furniture to jewelry, as well as folk art.
“Collecting comes in waves,” Wright says, “and what’s popular at the moment can be influenced by what the magazines are showing, what people think is going to go up in the market. The popularity of Art Deco may have something to do with the tie to Hollywood and the movies, Jean Harlow and all those people. We also have wonderful Art Deco architecture here.”
Beeton has seen a spike in popularity--and prices--in recent years for French Modernism, pieces from the 1930s and ‘40s that are “sexy, chic and stylish.” Clients are also decorating outdoor spaces with the same fervor as indoors. Beeton recalls one couple who scooped up a pair of garden ornaments for $3,500.
Interior designers who shop the show carefully consider which clients they’ll shepherd--it usually ends up being people they’ve worked with previously who don’t go into sticker shock when they see a six-figure price tag.
“People are willing to pay for quality and authenticity,” says Engelson, who adds that a few clients haven’t blinked at dropping five figures for a piece, although the average sale hovers around four. “They’re not really balking at the price if they find what they want, so that’s not really a struggle.” Beeton, too, takes clients whom he’s educated to the ways of high-end spending, and spend they have, as much as $50,000 or $60,000 on individual pieces, including an American Gothic Revival desk.
Even though he spends hours at the designer preview night picking out pieces for clients, Beeton encourages them to be open to those corner-of-the-eye finds, like the bolt of Lyonnaise fabric circa 1785 he found on the way out the door on closing night one year. He’s not the only one who takes this approach.
“I try not to have a preset feeling of what I should find,” says collector Stella Krieger who, with husband Fred, collects antique rugs and textiles, among other things. “If you do, you’re in for a disappointment. We know people who have collected similar things and are attracted to something different. I think that depends a lot on the dealers--if they’re particularly good salesmen they can get you interested, especially if you’re waiting to be inspired.”
Educating Angelenos
on the Finer Things
Some outsiders view Los Angeles as a design-savvy hub, but others hang on to the tired perception of the city as unsophisticated, uneducated and uninterested in antiques--a town filled with sun-fried show-biz wannabes concerned only with the new. “Los Angeles doesn’t lack for intelligence and the ability to appreciate art,” says John Keith Russell, owner of John Keith Russell Antiques in South Salem, N.Y., “but it can’t appreciate something it’s not exposed to.” That makes for little interest here in the pre-1850 American antiques in which he specializes.
But ask Connecticut-based American antiquities dealer Allan Katz how business has been the last five years he’s had a booth at the L.A. Antiques Show and he is very upbeat. “People in Los Angeles love art and they’re attracted to things that have good art content,” says Katz, owner of Allan Katz Americana in Woodbridge, Conn., who typically brings sculptural folk art that’s “visually very strong,” and this year plans to include weathervanes, an 1820 painted clock and a painted carousel horse from 1910. “I think the museums and designers and magazines have all nurtured their eye in a positive way.”
Art dealer James Berry Hill of Berry-Hill Galleries in New York says his strategy is to bring “phenomenal things,” which this year translates into a Singer Sargent and an Edward Hopper.
“There are very sophisticated buyers in a wide, diverse audience,” he says. “Last year we brought the highest quality--including a major Folies Bergere collection--and Los Angeles responded with an enthusiasm that was very gratifying. I think the L.A. market is starved for really fine things. There’s clearly a tradition in L.A. of fine collections.”
“I like the L.A. show,” says ethnic and tribal art dealer Joel Cooner of Dallas, who’s bringing a pair of 16th century Japanese temple dogs (price tag: $30,000) to the show. “It draws a great crowd, the best crowd I’ve ever seen in California, and I do have some collectors out there. But L.A. is just a weird place. It’s full of weirdos. But I’m comfortable there--I’m a weirdo.
“I have serious material, and in New York, people know what they’re looking at,” Cooner adds. “In New York people get to see a lot of art; there are always shows in New York, millions of exhibitions at museums. The education quotient is incredible. In L.A., they don’t have a clue. But if they like it, they buy it. Somebody might come there to buy a diamond ring, and then they’ll see a Zulu hat and have to have it.”
Even some locals share Cooner’s view: “We’re not that sophisticated,” says Elizabeth Dinkel, a partner with the West Hollywood design firm Leta Austin Foster & Associates and a Women’s Guild member. “I don’t know whether it’s because L.A. is somewhat transitional, but I’m concerned that there’s so much new money here that there’s not that much appreciation for old things. Look at all the wonderful old houses in Beverly Hills that have been flattened. I always try to encourage clients to buy antiques because they appreciate in value and are a piece of history and a thing of beauty. I think there’s a lack of education and appreciation, and that’s why the show is so important.”
The L.A. Antiques show runs Friday-Sunday at Santa Monica Airport’s Barker Hangar. For information, call (310) 423-3667, or go to: www.losangelesantiqueshow.com.