Frank Partridge | antiquedealersblog

January 31, 2021

The Grosvenor House Antiques Fair

This blog post is inspired by one of my Christmas gifts – (thanks to my wife Mo!) – an early edition (1935) of the handbook of exhibitors at ‘The Antique Dealers’ Fair’ (known, from 1970, as ‘The Grosvenor House Antiques Fair’ and from 1994 as ‘The Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair). As you may know, The Antique Dealers’ Fair was staged from 1934, with the final edition of the fair in 2009. A copy of the 1935 handbook is quite a rare thing – I don’t yet have a copy of the handbook for 1934, (I have a copy of the list of exhibitors though – but if anyone does know of the whereabouts of a copy of the 1934 handbook I would be very interested to hear).

There was an obvious break in staging the fair during the period around the Second World War (1938-1947) and the event in 1979 was cancelled due to the ‘chambermaids’ strike at The Grosvenor House Hotel, but other than these breaks The Antique Dealers’ Fair was considered to be the premier antiques fair in the world and attracted an international elite of dealers, collectors and museum curators. The Fair came under the Patronage of H.M. Queen Mary from 1937, and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother from 1954. The Grosvenor House Hotel opened in Park Lane, London in 1928, on the site of the former London residence of the Earls Grosvenor; the chairman and builder of the hotel, Alfred Edwards, was involved with the Fair right from the start, helping with the financing and organisation of the Fair.

Verso of postcard with message to ‘Miss Maud Tidy’ 19th July 1935. Antique Dealers Research Project, University of Leeds.

Postcard, Grosvenor House Hotel, c.1935. Antique Dealers Research Project, University of Leeds.

Above is a postcard (also a Christmas gift from Mo!) showing the Grosvenor House Hotel, which was sent to ‘Miss Maud Tidy’ in July 1935, the same year for the date of the catalogue for The Antique Dealers’ Fair, and gives you a sense of how opulent the hotel was at the time.

The idea for The Antique Dealers’ Fair was that of the dealers Alex Lewis and Cecil Turner. Lewis was a partner in the antique furniture dealers James A. Lewis & Sons (established in c.1895), who in the 1930s were trading in fashionable Brompton Road, London, with a branch in New York – here is a photograph of the interior of James Lewis & Sons shop in Brompton Road in 1935, and from the 1935 Antique Dealers’ Fair Handbook.

James A. Lewis & Sons, Brompton Road, London. Photograph, Antique Dealers Fair Handbook 1935.

Lewis was a member of the Executive Committee for the Fair, acting as Chair of the Committee in 1938, but does not appear to be listed in the Fair Committees after the Second World War. Cecil Francis Turner (1889-1959), who was elected President of the British Antique Dealers’ Association (BADA) in 1935, was trading as Stuart & Turner (established in 1919) in Soho Square, London; here’s a photograph of Stuart & Turner’s shop, also from the 1935 Antique Dealers’ Handbook. Turner was the first Chair of the Executive Committee and continued in that role (excepting 1938) until 1953.

Stuart & Turner, Soho Square, London. Antique Dealers’ Fair Handbook 1935.

The 1935 edition of the Antique Dealers’ Fair handbook (like all editions) contains a floor-plan of the Fair, with the names of the antique dealers, and gives a fascinating insight into the ambitions of the dealers at the Fair. Below is the floor-plan of the stands on the ground-floor of the Fair in 1935, with the stands of James A. Lewis & Son and that of Stuart & Turner, side-by-side at the top of the floor-plan.

Floor-plan of The Antique Dealers’ Fair, 1935. Photograph, Antique Dealers Research Project, University of Leeds.

The floor-plan for the stands on the Gallery in the 1935 handbook illustrates the large stands taken by leading dealers such as Mallet & Sons, Moss Harris & Sons and the antique silver dealers S. J. Phillips (left side of the gallery).

Floor-plan for the Gallery, The Antique Dealers’ Fair Handbook, 1935. Photograph, Antique Dealers Research Project, University of Leeds.

According to the arts journalist Frank Davis, former saleroom correspondent of The Times and later Country Life, some members of the antique trade were initially a little resistant to participate in the Fair. As Davis wrote, ‘I remember very well how opinions differed when the idea of a great fair in the heart of London was first mooted, many regarding the scheme as decidedly infra dig, presenting an honourable trade to a wide public as if it were a mere market in the souk of Algiers.’ (F. Davis, ‘High Standards from the Start’, The Grosvenor House Antiques Fair Handbook, 1983, pp.8-9, p.8). And it is striking that there were a number of leading antique dealers absent in the very first iteration of The Antique Dealers’ Fair in 1934 – Frank Partridge & Sons, Mallet & Son, Norman Adams, H. Blairman & Sons, Moss Harris & Sons, for example, are all absent from the first Fair in 1934, but appear to have embraced the Fair by 1935.

The other interesting aspect in the pages of the Antique Dealers’ Fair handbooks is in the presentation of information by the antique dealers. In the first handbooks, in the 1935 and 1936 editions, the dealers seem to merely use the pages in the handbooks to reproduce magazine advertisements – they look like any dealer adverts of the period in magazines such as The Connoisseur or Apollo – here’s an example from the 1935 Antique Dealers’ Fair handbook for the well-known dealer Jessie M. Botibol. Indeed, many of the dealer advertisements in the 1935 handbook do not even illustrate any objects at all, and merely list the addresses and specialisms (antique silver, or ceramics, for example) of the dealer.

Advertisement for J.M. Botibol from The Antique Dealers’ Fair handbook 1935. Photograph, Antiques Dealers Research Project, University of Leeds.

Just two years later, from 1937, the pages of the handbooks shift format, and focus much more on objects that the particular dealer will have on display and for sale at the fair. Here’s one example from the 1937 handbook, from the famous dealers Hotspur, then trading from Frith Street, Soho Square, London – as the caption at the bottom of the page states, ‘the above are displayed by Hotspur’.

Advertisement for Hotspur, Frith Street, London, in The Antique Dealers’ Fair handbook 1935. Photograph, Antiques Dealers Research Project, University of Leeds.

This is a minor change of course, but directs attention to how the handbooks for the Antique Dealers’ Fair began to act more like catalogues of an exhibition, rather than as commercial advertisements for the trade – and in this sense this shift also perhaps reflects the desires of those organising and participating in the fair to successfully blend the discourse of private and public value, positioning the fair as much for public education as for private profit.

The handbooks for The Antique Dealers’ Fair provide fascinating insights into the history of the antique trade in Britain, and I hope to compose some more blog posts on these important resources over the coming months.

Mark

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Tags: Cecil Turner, Frank Davis, Frank Partridge, Grosvenor House Antiques Fair, H. Blairman & Sons, Hotspur, J.M. Botibol, James A Lewis & Sons, M. Harris & Sons, Norman Adams

December 2, 2018

SOLD! A Major Exhibition at The Bowes Museum

As some of the readers of the Antique Dealers Blog already know, for the last 18 months I’ve been very busy working as ‘guest curator’ on an exhibition called ‘SOLD!’ at The Bowes Museum based on over 10 years of research on the history of Antique Dealing in Britain – and we can now announce the forthcoming opening (on 26th January 2019) of the exhibition! Here is the poster, with the stunning bronze by Antico of c.1490-1500, acquired by the V&A Museum through the dealer Horace Baxter in 1960, as the ‘poster boy’.

SOLD! Poster

SOLD!, which opens on 26th January 2019, brings together more than 40 world-class objects, from various museums, including the V&A, the British Museum, The Royal Armouries, Royal Collection, The Lady Lever Art Gallery and Temple Newsam, as well as objects from the collections at The Bowes Museum itself, and loans from private collections never seen in public before, to tell the ‘hidden histories’ of the objects with a focus on the history of antique dealing. One of my PhD students (Simon Spier) is working as the project research assistant helping with the assembly of the recreation of an ‘old curiosity shop’ which will be part of the display and interpretation for SOLD! – you can follow Simon’s activities in the special Twitter feed we have developed – see https://twitter.com/Bowes_GBAS

Besides ‘Antico’ from the V&A Museum…(which I have been calling a ‘Horace Baxter’ – indeed, I have been calling all the objects in the exhibition by the name of the dealer who sold them which has been very confusing for many museum curators! – so the ‘Antico’ is a ‘Horace Baxter’; we also have a ‘Henry Farrer’ (a very rare 16th century Venetian glass goblet – sold by Farrer to the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A Museum) in 1854 for £30.0.0) – you can just see the edge of the green glass goblet to the right of the ‘Baxter’ in the poster above; and a ‘David Tremayne’ – the wonderful 18th century bronze mask, sold to The Bowes Museum by David Tremayne in 1966 – you can just the bronze mask to the left of the ‘Baxter’ (sorry, the ‘Antico’) in the poster.

We have a wonderful range of objects in SOLD!, including this amazing demilance suit of armour of c.1620 from the Royal Armouries, (Tower Armouries Collection in London), which was acquired via the well-known specialist dealer in ‘ancient armour’ Samuel & Henry Pratt from their ‘The Gothic Hall’ just off New Bond Street in 1840.

S. & H. Pratt – (1840) – Demilance suit of armour, c.1620. Photograph courtesy of The Royal Armouries.

As part of SOLD! we have objects that passed through the hands of major 19th century dealers such as E.H. Baldock, John Webb and George Durlacher; and in the 20th century, major dealers such as Frank Partridge, M. Harris & Sons, H. Blairman & Sons, Mallett & Son, Wartski, Hotspur, S.J. Phillips, and Bluett & Son…plus many more besides.

One of the major dealers we have focused on is Phillips of Hitchin; mainly because we have the Phillips of Hitchin archives at the Brotherton Library Special Collections at the University of Leeds. And here’s a very rare photograph of the Phillips of Hitchin shop in c.1905, with Frederick W. Phillips (centre) the chap that established the firm in 1882, and Hugh Phillips (his brother) to the right (we don’t know who the third person is) – the photograph was taken just a few years before Frederick Phillips bought the ‘Gothic Cupboard’ and sold it to Robert Mond (see below).

F.W. Phillips (Phillips of Hitchin) shop, Hitchin, c.1905. Digital copy of glass-plate negative courtesy of the V&A Museum.

Jerome Phillips, the grandson of Frederick Phillips, kindly identified the people in the photograph – and Kate Hay at the V&A Museum and her volunteers generously made a digital copy from the original glass-plate negative (part of the Phillips of Hitchin material that is, at present, at the V&A stores).

There are also couple of objects from the V&A Museum in the exhibition that were sold by Phillips of Hitchin – this Gothic cupboard (known as ‘Prince Arthur’s Cupboard’ in the early 20th century when it was acquired by the V&A Museum) was sold by F.W. Phillips (Phillips of Hitchin) to the well-known collector Robert Mond in 1912 for £220.0.0. – Mond donated it to the V&A in the same year.

F.W. Phillips (Phillips of Hitchin) ‘Gothic Cupboard’ c.1500-1600. Sold by F.W. Phillips in 1912. Photograph courtesy of the V&A Museum.

The other Phillips of Hitchin object in the exhibition is the famous ‘Medal Cabinet’ by the 18th century cabinetmaker William Vile (c.1700-1767), of c.1760, which was sold by PoH to the V&A in 1963 for £10,000.

Phillips of Hitchin (1963). George III mahogany medal cabinet, c.1760. Photograph courtesy of the V&A Museum.

The exhibition will also have a wide range of exceptionally rare antique dealer archives, and a range of dealer ephemera, to bring to life the history of the antique trade. But there are also some spectacularly rare objects in SOLD! – indeed, one of the key premises of the exhibition is to show some very familiar, world-class museum objects, but to ‘reframe’ them through the narrative of the art market; and to bring the previously marginalized story of antique dealing more directly, and more explicitly, into the spaces of the public museum – and to provoke us all (museum curators, academics, and the public) to reflect on why the art market has often been suppressed and dislocated from the narratives of the history of art that the museum presents us with.

We hope that the ‘SOLD!’ exhibition will be a catalyst for increased public engagement with these previously marginalized stories.

I’ll be updating the blog with regular progress reports on SOLD! as we move towards the opening of the exhibition on 26th January 2019 – I do hope that we will see as many people who can make it to SOLD! at Bowes Museum and I hope to say ‘hello’ if I am about at the exhibition.

Mark

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June 14, 2018

Antique Dealer Exhibitions & new material in the Phillips of Hitchin archives

As followers of the Antique Dealer blog will be aware, one aspect of the continued development of the Antique Dealer research project has been an investigation into the emergence and role of themed exhibitions staged by antique dealers over the course of the 20th century. Indeed, as a platform for dissemination of information on antiques and as a mechanism for the marketing of antiques, these exhibitions very usefully draw attention to the deep synergies between structures of knowledge and the art market. Dealers have regularly organised selling exhibitions of course – the famous ‘Summer Exhibitions’ held by the leading New Bond Street dealership Frank Partridge & Sons from the 1950s to the 1980s, were opportunities to showcase new stock and for the swish private preview parties for the exhibitions, which were significant events in the social calendar. Such exhibitions were attended by the most influential collectors, museum curators, interior decorators and antique dealers. But what is of particular interest to the research project are the more scholarly, thematic exhibitions that antique dealers have staged over the years. These exhibitions, which remain a regular part of the current practices of antique dealing at the top of the antique trade, demonstrate the discrete, focused and scholarly contributions that many antique dealers have made to the knowledge of antiques – such exhibitions have often been accompanied by museum-type catalogues composed by antique dealers who are acknowledged as leading specialists in their field.

We are very fortunate that in the recent additions to the Phillips of Hitchin archive (again very generously sent up to us in Leeds by Jerome Phillips, who found the extra material whilst tidying up some stores – thank you again Jerome!) we now have a range of material that illustrates the detailed planning and execution of a range of ground-breaking exhibitions held by Phillips of Hitchin during the 1970s and 1980s. Jerome organised these immensely influential selling exhibitions on specific furniture types – a model, unsurprisingly, that was also being adopted in public museums such as Temple Newsam in Leeds at the time (see, for example the exhibitions on ‘School Furniture’ organised by the furniture history scholar Christopher Gilbert at Temple Newsam in 1978 and a similar exhibition at Temple Newsam on ‘Common Furniture’ in 1982).

The Phillips of Hitchin exhibitions in June 1981 and June 1984 (staged to coincide with the Grosvenor House Antiques Fair held each June (except 1981) in London) are key examples of these types of antique dealer exhibitions. In 1981 the exhibition on ‘Dining Room Furniture 1730-1830’ was a scholarly project, with antique furniture placed in rooms to mirror the social use of the objects at the time they were made – rather like a ‘period room’ setting that was also so popular in museums at the time.

Phillips of Hitchin exhibition ‘Dining Room Furniture 1730-1830’ June 1981. Photograph Phillips of Hitchin archives, Brotherton Library Special Collections, University of Leeds.

Here’s another room at The Manor House, Phillips of Hitchin’s shop, with the assembly of some furniture suggestive of a more rustic dining space. The exhibition had a fully illustrated catalogue – Jerome remains a leading scholar on antique furniture and wrote many essays on the subject that appeared in publications such as Antique Collector; it’s also worth mentioning that in 1978 Jerome composed the new Introduction to the reprint of R.W. Symonds Masterpieces of English Furniture and Clocks (first published in 1940).

Phillips of Hitchin exhibition ‘Dining Room Furniture 1730-1830’ June 1981. Photograph, Phillips of Hitchin archives, Brotherton Library Special Collections, University of Leeds.

Phillips of Hitchin’s exhibitions on dining furniture might be considered as relatively conventional, and of course they were more than just museum-type scholarly projects and also offered the opportunity for potential buyers to imagine new schemes for their dining rooms. Jerome’s next exhibition, in June 1984, was of a type that was more ground-breaking, for the antique trade at least (as I mentioned, museums such as Temple Newsam were already organising exhibitions focused on specialist furniture types in the 1970s). The ‘Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850’ exhibition in 1984 involved considerable primary research and was again accompanied by a catalogue with a discursive essay on the historical development of travelling and campaigning furniture.

Phillips of Hitchin catalogue for Exhibition of Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850.

The Travelling and Campaigning Furniture exhibition was obviously more specialist in nature, as I imagine was the audience for the exhibition – specialist collectors of ‘metamorphic’ furniture and museum curators perhaps? But the exhibition itself was a considerable success, according to the detail in the Phillips of Hitchin archives on the exhibition. Indeed, reading the archive one cannot but admire the research and the time and effort that went into the planning and delivery of these exhibitions.

Phillips of Hitchin exhibition ‘Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850’ June 1984. Photograph, Phillips of Hitchin archive, Brotherton Library Special Collections, University of Leeds.

The new parts of the Phillips of Hitchin archive contains numerous photographs of the actual exhibitions, together with correspondence and supplementary detail on the planning of the exhibitions themselves – it’s a wealth of material that helps us to understand the objectives and complex nature of these scholarly and selling events.

Phillips of Hitchin exhibition ‘Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850’ June 1984. Photograph, Phillips of Hitchin archive, Brotherton Library Special Collections, University of Leeds.

One further thing, and something that also demonstrates the richness of the archives that Jerome so generously donated to Leeds University, is that Jerome also saved the object labels from the exhibition! …..and here’s just one of a number of those labels from an object from the ‘Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850’ exhibition.

Phillips of Hitchin exhibition ‘Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850’ June 1984, object label. Phillips of Hitchin archive, Brotherton Library Special Collections, University of Leeds.

There’s more to say about the significance of these scholarly selling exhibitions organised by dealers such as Phillips of Hitchin and we are fortunate to have such archive material to help us to continue to explore and analyse the cultural history of the British antique trade.

Mark

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Tags: antique dealer archives, Brotherton Special Collections, Christopher Gilbert, Dealer Exhibitions, Frank Partridge, Jerome Phillips, Phillips of Hitchin, Temple Newsam House

October 7, 2015

More Oral History Interviews – Frank Partridge

We are gathering quite a collection of Oral History interviews for the Antique Dealers project – we now have 19 interviews in our database…with more still to come! Our latest interviewee was Frank Partridge, the great-grandson of the founder of perhaps one of the world’s most famous antique dealing firms, Frank Partridge & Sons, of London and New York. In a really engaging interview, Frank told us about the early history of Partridge & Sons – the family were originally Cobblers in Hertford apparently, before moving into the antique trade in the late 19th century. Here, below, is Frank Partridge, standing in front of a portrait of his great-grandfather – Frank is a very experienced antique dealer, having been in the antique business for almost 40 years….

Frank Partridge. Image copyright Frank Partridge Limited.

Robert Partridge, the brother of Frank’s great-grandfather, was the first to set up in business as an antique dealer, in c.1900 – and here’s an image of R.W. Partridge’s shop in c.1910 – ‘Top Red Gallery’ in King Street, St. James’s, London. Robert was one of four Partridge brothers, all involved in the antique trade; Frank senior set up the eponymous firm in c.1905.

R.W. Partridge, Top Red Gallery. c.1910.

Frank joined the family business in c.1981, before leaving to set up his own antique business in 2004. As readers of the blog will probably know, Frank Partridge & Sons was sold in 2006, and eventually ceased trading shortly afterwards. During the interview, Frank offers some fascinating reflections of the changes to the antique trade over the last 40 years – as well as observations on the conditions and networks of the various antique markets in Britain, the USA and in France. He also told us about Partridge’s relationships to major collectors, such a J.Paul Getty, and other international dealers such as French & Company, of New York.

As with all of the other interviews we have completed, we are in the process of editing the interview, ready for uploading into the project websites for future generations of researchers and interested parties, to enjoy.

Mark

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Tags: Frank Partridge, Oral History

March 29, 2015

More on early 20th century antique dealers in New York

Following the blog post on ‘searching for Duveen’ in the streets of New York I thought it would be interesting to find the former locations of some of the other antique dealers I encountered in the archives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York – it’s also the opportunity to share some of the fascinating archive documents in the archives (thanks again to Melissa Bowling, one of the archivists at the Met Museum for helping with the research for the Antique Dealer project!) Most of the dealer galleries dating from the early part of the 20th century seem to have been demolished in the continual processes of renewal of the architectural landscape of New York city, (as you’ll see in the comments below) – but I did find one building that still remains (although no longer the premises of an antique dealer).

Some of you may know of the dealership ‘C.Charles’ – he was a brother of the famous Joseph Duveen; he was, apparently, not allowed to use the trading name of ‘Duveen’ (there’s only ONE Duveen I guess), so began trading as ‘C. Charles’ in London in the opening decades of the 20th century, and by the 1930s was trading as ‘Charles of London’ in the USA. Here’s a fascinating invoice from ‘Charles of London’ dated November 9th 1936, for an ‘Old 18th Century Mahogany Desk’, sold to the famous American collector Robert Lehman for $550 – (I couldn’t trace this object in the Met Museum collections….).

Invoice ‘Charles of London’ November 9th, 1936. Box 37, Folder 12, Robert Lehman Papers, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum Archives.

In my walks around New York searching for the locations of former antique dealer galleries I found Charles Duveen’s gallery at 12 West 56th Street – a very elegant (as one might expect) building, designed in a similar vein to Joseph Duveen’s spectacular purpose built gallery on 5th Avenue (see previous blog post).

Charles of London former gallery at 12 West 56th Street New York. Photo MW March 2015.

There were a few other letters and invoices from dealers I found in the archives, and I managed to find the former locations of the dealers – as I say, sadly the buildings themselves no longer exist. The location of the galleries of the famous antique dealers French & Co at 6 East 56th Street are now (maybe appropriately!) occupied by Armani –

Former location of French & Co (1916). Photo MW March 2015.

French and Co were at 6 East 56th Street, New York by 1916, as this invoice (again photographed by kind permission of the Metropolitan Museum Archives) demonstrates –

Invoice, French & Co., 1916. Box 4, Folder 16, Durr Friedley Records, 1906-1918 (1917-1918) The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum Archives.

(I’ll come back to the contents of the invoice itself in another blog post…).

French & Co had moved to 210 East 57th Street by the 1930s, but again the building they occupied no longer remains…..

former French and co 210 East 57th st NY

Former location of French & Co, 210 East 57th Street, New York in the 1930s. Photo MW March 2015.

And here’s the former location of the dealer A.S. Drey, ‘Antique Paintings and Works of Art’, who, according to a note in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives moved to 680 5th Avenue, New York in 1929. The location is now occupied by shops and offices.

Former location of A.S. Drey, 680 5th Avenue, New York in 1929. Photo MW March 2015.

And, just for the record, I also found the former New York locations at 6 West 56th Street for Frank Partridge & Sons (they were at this address from at least the early 1920s until at least the late 1960s – Partridge & Sons, like many of the dealers highlighted in this blog, are no longer trading).

Former location of Frank Partridge & Sons, 6 West 56th Street, New York. Photo MW March 2015.

And the locations of ‘Arnold Seligmann, Rey & Company Incorporated’ trading at 7 West 36th Street, New York in 1916, are now shops and offices….

Former location of Arnold Seligmann, Rey & Co., 7 West 36th Street, New York. Photo MW March 2015.

Likewise the former location of the antique dealer and interior decorators ‘White Allom’ (led by Sir Charles Allom) at 19 East 52nd Street, New York in 1914, are now occupied by an hotel.

Former location of the galleries of White Allom, 19 East 52nd Street, New York in 1914. Photo MW March 2015.

As you can see, the archives at the Met Museum were a catalyst for a fruitful perambulation around a (very cold) New York….
Mark

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Tags: A.S. Drey, archives, C Charles, Dealer shops, Duveen, Frank Partridge, French & Co, Images of Shops, Metropolitan Museum, New York, Partridge, Seligmann, White Allom

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