Year of the Dealer | antiquedealersblog

November 30, 2024

Remembering Robin Kern (Hotspur Ltd)

It is with very great sadness that we heard that Robin Kern sadly passed away on 2nd November. We have our own reflections on Robin and on the antique dealing business of Hotspur further below, but Chris Coles, who undertook our oral history interview with Robin back in 2016, has also composed a personal tribute to Robin.

Robin Kern, of Hotspur Limited, in 1999. Photograph courtesy of Robin Kern.

A Personal Tribute to Robin Kern from Chris Coles

Mark has very kindly allowed me to write a few words about Robin Kern. I first met Robin whilst still working at the British Museum. I had fortuitously seen an advert in the Antiques Trade Gazette that Mark had placed, asking for volunteers for the Antique Dealers Project. Thankfully I applied and was accepted and Mark very kindly allowed me to conduct some of the oral history interviews. One of those interviews was with Robin Kern at his beautiful home in Notting Hill. I had previously met Robin some years before at his premises in Kinnerton Mews, having already closed the Lowndes Street shop. I had actually visited him as a result of a visitor to my department at the BM who had told me that she was researching dummy boards. I knew that Robin had a pair in stock at that time and suggested that she went to see him. She emailed me afterwards to say how well she had been treated and that I should go and see him myself and I did. This bringing together of academics and researchers and members of the trade was entirely typical of the way that Robin conducted himself and it was no surprise at all that some of his best friends, and greatest clients, included the likes of Christopher Gilbert buying for Temple Newsam and Sir Nicholas Goodison the expert on Matthew Boulton and barometers. As John Hill said so perfectly in his eulogy at Robin’s funeral

‘He was a gifted mentor, using his passion for diplomacy and his velvet touch……Robin and Brian built a strong bond of friendship and trust between like-minded souls and Hotspur was to feel a bit like a private members club’.

When I interviewed Robin for the project he spoke with understandable pride about some of the many famous private collections he had helped to form such as those for the McAlpine family, Jon Gerstenfeld, Fred Krehbiel and Jon Bryan. It is no exaggeration to say that Hotspur took the marketing of purely English furniture and works of art to a new level amongst the trade and virtually every great collection of such pieces will include something that passed through the firm’s hands at one stage or another.

When conducting the oral history interviews, it was always our policy to get a photograph of the interviewee for use in the relevant section on the website. Robin was insistent that we use the image of him and his brother Brian with the Chippendale lacquer secretaire, now at Temple Newsam (see photograph below), that featured in the Hotspur anniversary book. He didn’t want anyone to be under the impression that the firm’s success was down to him alone and wanted Brian, who had already tragically passed away by that time, to get his full share of the credit. The two brothers took over running the firm in the most difficult of circumstances, both of their parents having been killed in a tragic car crash. Under the brothers’ stewardship, however, the firm flourished and moved on to the next level and the respect and affection for Robin was obvious from the remarkable turnout for his funeral which was attended by almost everyone involved in the current high end furniture trade and plenty in other branches of the antiques trade as well.

Robin’s generosity towards the Antique Dealers Project was cemented by his decision to give all of the remaining copies of the Hotspur anniversary book to Mark for use as university prizes and this, again, was typical of his outlook in life, always trying to help others and never hinder.

All of us involved in the furniture trade in Britain and America owe a huge debt of gratitude to Robin for raising the profile and standard of dealing in our area and for his personal kindness and generosity. He was a titan of the trade who will be sadly missed and I send my condolences to his widow Odile, herself also a great dealer, and the rest of the Kern family.

Robin Kern (1938-2024) – Thank you Chris for your contribution to the Antique Dealers Research Blog. Robin’s obituary was also published in the Antiques Trade Gazette (ATG 23rd November 2024), p.79 (composed by his friend, Simon Phillips of Ronald Phillips Limited, London). Below are my own reflections on Robin and the significance of the antique dealers’ Hotspur Limited.

Robin Kern with his brother Brian at Hotspur with the black lacquer secretaire from Harewood House, Yorkshire, sold to Temple Newsam, Leeds, in 1999. Photograph, Robin Kern.

I remember meeting Robin in London at his store in Chelsea, back in 2018. I had driven down from Leeds to collect a very large pile of copies of the book published to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the founding of Hotspur (2004) Hotspur: Eighty Years of Antiques Dealing which, with typical generosity (as Chris mentioned above) Robin had given to the Antique Dealer Research Project to distribute to students enrolled on the module I teach at the University of Leeds (called ‘Antique Dealers: the market for ‘decorative art’ from curiosities to retro’). It is a 3rd year undergraduate module, the focus of which I believe is unique in UK universities, and which I’ve been running for almost 10 years now. Robin give us dozens and dozens of spare copies of the Hotspur book, which I distribute each year to eager students studying the history of antique dealing. Here’s a photograph of the undergraduate students enjoying the book from 2023 (and which I also would send to Robin as evidence of the real impact of his generosity!)

BA students with copies of ‘Hotspur’ in 2023. Photograph, University of Leeds.

The antique dealing business, Hotspur Limited, was founded by Robin’s grandfather, Frederick Kern (see below) together with Robin’s father, Robert (Rob) Kern (see below) in 1924. Frederick had been a director of the London branch of the decorators and antique dealers Carlhain and Beaumartz, as Nicholas Goodison described in the history of Hotspur, ‘[Frederick] was with the firm for twenty years until it closed in 1914, and was then briefly in business at 27 Soho Square as a director of Monday, Kern and Herbert, where he was in charge of the ‘Antique Department and Reproductions” (Goodison & Kern, Hotspur: eighty years of antiques dealing (Two Associates, London, 2004), p.19.

Frederick Kern (1868-1958) in c.1955. Photograph, Robin Kern.

Robert Kern in 1974. Photograph Robin Kern.

Hotspur’s first antique shop was at 16 Buckingham Palace Road in London, before moving to 6 Frith Street, near Soho Square in London by the late 1920s. The building in Frith Street occupied by Hotspur Ltd was formerly the home of the writer William Hazlitt (1778-1830) and the interiors were perfect for displays of English antique furniture that Hotspur were famous for buying and selling.

Hotspur Limited, 6 Frith Street, London, interior. Photograph, Robin Kern.

Sales brochure produced by Hotspur in 1928. Photograph, Antique Dealer Research Project University of Leeds.

In 1939, to avoid bombing during the Second World War, Hotspur relocated to Streatham Lodge, Richmond, a rather grand 17th century house, again with period rooms ideal for the display of English antique furniture.

Streatham Lodge, the business location of Hotspur from 1939 to 1951. Photograph, Robin Kern.

In 1951 Frederick and Rob Kern moved Hotspur back to central London, to 14 Lowndes Street, a very smart street near Belgrave Square, and in 1956 Robin joined his father in the business, followed by his younger brother Brian in 1963. Robin and Brian’s father and mother, Rob and Betty, were tragically killed in a road accident in 1977. Brian retired from the business in 1999, but Robin continued, finally closing the doors in 2008.

Hotspur were one of the leading dealers in the highest quality antique furniture, especially English furniture of the ‘classic’ period 1680-1830. As Chris mentions (above) they helped build many of the most important collections of antique furniture in the mid-to-late-20th century in both the UK and the USA. Hotspur were also central to building of the antique furniture collection of Noel Terry (1899-1979), which remain on display at Fairfax House in York

Our memories of Robin are of a highly principled and exceptionally generous person. We are privileged to have included Robin and Hotspur as part of the Antique Dealers Research Project at the University of Leeds. Indeed, we are working quickly to make the oral history interview that we undertook with Robin and Chris Coles available to listeners (we are just sorting out the images so we can make that interview live on the project website). You may also be interested to hear that Hotspur are one of the antique dealers that are highlighted as part of the Year of the Dealer digital trails – the sale of the Harewood House secretaire (and the story of Hotspur), shown above, is one of the 10 objects in the digital trail at Temple Newsam, Leeds. We hope to have news of the launch of the Year of the Dealer trails in January, so do keep you eye on the Blog.

But before that, we send our sincerest condolences and best wishes to Robin’s family and friends.

Mark

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Tags: Chris Coles, Fairfax House, Hotspur, John Bryan, Nicholas Goodison, Noel Terry, Robin Kern, Temple Newsam House, Year of the Dealer

July 30, 2023

Antique Shops in Visual Culture I

As readers of the antique dealers Blog will know, we’ve been acquiring antique dealer ephemera for many years now – dealer catalogues, photographs and archives, as part of the on-going research project into the history of the antique trade in Britain. Much of this material, including the extraordinary collection of antique dealer archives, is housed at the Brotherton Library Special Collections at the University of Leeds.

More recently, we’ve been seeking out paintings depicting antique shops – we recently acquired, for example, a naïve painting (oil on canvas, c.1880, signed ‘M. Davis’) of the shop of Mr Deadman at an auction in The Netherlands of all places – ‘Ye Old Beckenham Curio Shoppe’ (see below). The shop depicted in the painting was in High Street, Beckenham in Kent (the building, which appears to be 16th century, was demolished by the 1930s). Frederick William Deadman (either the same dealer or perhaps a relative) was still trading as an antique dealer in the late 1930s – from a shop in Station Road, Freshwater on the Isle of Wight.

M. Davis ‘Ye Old Beckenham Curio Shoppe’, oil on canvas 24 in x 17 in; c.1880. Private Collection.

This painting has been added to our growing collection of paintings of antique shops, all of which demonstrate how important the idea of the antique shop has been in British cultural life. An earlier acquisition, of an equally naïve painting, illustrates this point. The painting, a watercolour, (10.5 in x 15 in, by H. Middleton-Holding, c.1910) of an antique shop in York Street, London, was acquired at auction in Shaftesbury, Dorset in 2019. It’s also a rather naïve work, but is charmingly rendered (see below):

H. Middleton-Holding, ‘York Street, Westminster, London’ watercolour, (10.5 in x 15 in), c.1910. Private Collection.

The artist has copied an engraving of the same scene, much more competently rendered and published in The Daily Chronicle on Tuesday September 27th in either 1904 or 1911, a copy of which is pasted to the backboard of the painting (see below) – (unfortunately, the actual year of the publication is obscured by some brown paper tape). The newspaper article outlines the history of the buildings in York Street, London and their occupiers, including the political philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and the highwayman Dick Turpin (1705-1739).

Backboard of the watercolour by H. Middleton-Holding. Private Collection.

The main shop in the scene, No. 32 York Street, was the location of a well-known female antique dealer, Mrs Amelia Jane Hardingham, who owned several antique shops in York Street (nos. 28-32), and began trading as an antique dealer in about 1900, in Waterloo Road, London. According to the article in The Daily Chronicle no.32 York Street was famous as the home of the artist George Morland (1763-1804) – perhaps that is why H. Middleton-Holding painted the scene again?

Amelia Hardingham’s shop was also captured in a photograph in c.1910 (see below).

A. Hardingham, Dealer in Works of Art, 32 York Street, London, c.1910. Photograph, The Victoria & Albert Museum, copyright V&A Museum.

Amelia Hardingham’s antique shop was swept away when the buildings on York Street were demolished in 1923 to create ‘Petty France’, but the shop front of her shop was saved. It was gifted to the Victoria & Albert Museum by the Army Council (which owned the buildings) as a fine example of a late 18th century shop front. In fact, as those who visited the exhibition, ‘SOLD! The Great British Antiques Story‘ at The Bowes Museum in 2019, may remember we used an image of Amelia Hardingham’s shop front as part of the introductory interpretation at the exhibition. Indeed, when the 18th century shop front was put on display at the V&A in 1924, it was set up as a display reproducing Amelia Hardingham’s antique shop (see below).

18th century shop front on display at the V&A Museum, 1924 – W.88-1923. Photograph, The Victoria & Albert Museum. Copyright V&A Museum.

The antique shop display at the V&A Museum caused some consternation in the Press at the time, with some commentators questioning if it was appropriate that an antique shop display should be in a museum!

18th century shop front, displayed as an antique shop, at the V&A Museum in 1924. Photograph, The Victoria & Albert Museum. Copyright V&A Museum.

Readers of the Blog may also be interested to hear that women antique dealers (including Amelia Hardingham) are also the focus of some of our ‘Year of the Dealer‘ digital trails – we have ‘women antique dealer’ themes in our Trails at The Victoria & Albert Museum, The Bowes Museum and at Preston Park Museum as part of this project – so do keep your eyes open for our Year of the Dealer Trails public launch in September. As for paintings of representations of antique shops, we have acquired several other paintings over the last few years and will create another Blog post illustrating those in the next few months, so keep you eye on the Blog!

Mark

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Tags: Amelia Hardingham, Digital Trails, Frederick Deadman, London trade, Paintings of Antique Shops, Preston Park Museum, SOLD! Exhibition, The Bowes Museum, The V&A, women antique dealers, Year of the Dealer, York Street

May 30, 2023

More on Samuel Richards: a Nottingham antique dealer 1890s-1920s

Readers of the Antique Dealers’ blog will be aware that we have previously posted a couple blog entries on the antique dealer Samuel Richards (1859-1927) (see blog posts November 2018 & June 2014). Richards is well-known for producing charming and detailed lithographed catalogues of his stock of antiques, which he issued monthly (with a few exceptions) from the early 1890s until the period around the First World War. Richards’ catalogues are quite rare – there are a few copies at the Victoria & Albert Museum Art Library in London, bound together in a couple of volumes. We also have a small number of bound copies in the John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History at the Brotherton Library Special Collections at the University of Leeds, thanks to the very generous bequest of the late John Bedford (1941-2019). The Brotherton Special Collections also has a couple more bound copies of Richards catalogues, very generously bought at auction (in Nottingham no less) in 2018 and donated by our friend and keen supporter of the antique dealer research project, Simon Myers, of the antique dealer R.N. Myers & Sons of Gargrave in North Yorkshire (thank you again Simon).

Samuel Richards, Nottingham, Catalogue of Stock, May 20th, 1896. Photograph, Antique Dealers’ Research Project, University of Leeds.

Richards drew the illustrations in the catalogues himself, producing them monthly and sending them out to collectors all over the UK – although Richards quite often felt the need to apologise for missing a month (due to sheer volume of work, he says) in some of the monthly catalogues.

Samuel Richards, Nottingham, catalogue of stock of antiques, April 1912. Photograph, Antique Dealers Research Project, University of Leeds.

Whilst such lithographed catalogues produced by antique dealers were not unique to Richards (see blog post of the catalogues produced by A. W. & F. Little, of Bristol, in the same period – Blog Post February 2022), Richards seems to have been particularly prolific.

As a result of these fascinating catalogues, we have been doing more research on Samuel Richards over the past few months and have discovered new information about his activities an antique dealer in the period 1890s to 1920s. Richards was born in Nottingham in 1859, and died in Loughborough in 1927. He appears to have run his antique dealing business in Nottingham, but lived most of his life in Loughborough. The Census (1901) records Richards aged 42, a ‘dealer in antiquities’ (as antiques were often called at the time), living at 1 Park Street, Loughborough, with his wife Maud (aged 38), his son Arthur (aged 9), and daughters Winifred (aged 5) and Nora (aged 4), together with a servant, Fanny (aged 16). Richards appears to have owned or rented another property in Herrick Road in Loughborough at the same time. Richards antique shops were located in Nottingham, at 77 Houndgate and at The Old Friary, Friary Lane – he seems to have operated from both premises from the 1890s until his retirement from business in c.1919 – his son Arthur (1891-1976) appears to have worked with his father in the antique shops from about 1908, perhaps until his father’s retirement in c.1919. Richards shop at 77 Houndgate was crammed full of antiques (see photograph from 1892, below) typical of the material he illustrated in his monthly catalogues.

Samuel Richards antique shop, 77 Houndgate, Nottingham, 1892. Photograph, Antique Dealers Research Project, University of Leeds.

You can just make out the exterior appearance of Richards’ Houndgate antique shop in the title page of some of his catalogues – see below).

Samuel Richards, catalogue of stock of antiques, 1891. Photograph, Antique Dealer Research Project, University of Leeds.

And as mentioned in the previous blog post in June 2014, the building that housed Richards’ Houndgate antique shop still exists (see below).

Building that housed Samuel Richards antique shop, photographed in 2014. Photograph, Antique Dealers Research Project, University of Leeds.

Richards’ other shop, The Old Friary in Friary Lane, Nottingham, was a much more famous building. He appears to have rented The Old Friary from the early 1890s until c.1919. The Old Friary was a 17^th century building, rebuilt as part of a much earlier series of buildings that were part of Whitefriars Priory (built c.1276).

The Old Friary, Nottingham, c.1927, just shortly prior to its demolition. Image courtesy of Getty Images as part of the Year of the Dealer project 2023.

The Old Friary was also partly rebuilt in the 16^th century and more famous for its associations with Dorothy Vernon (1544-1584) of Haddon Hall fame; Vernon is supposed to have lived at the Old Friary with her husband John Manners (1534-1611). In 1902 Charles Major published his famous romance novel ‘Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall’ which may have increased traffic to Richards’ shop. Certainly, such historic associations would have been of interest to an antiquary such as Richards and to his customers. The Old Friary was demolished in 1927. You can also just make out a photograph of The Old Friary in the title page of some of his catalogues of stock of antiques (see below).

Samuel Richards, catalogue of stock of antiques, February 1894. Photograph, Antique Dealer Research Project, University of Leeds.

We also have some exciting news about Samuel Richards – he is the focus of one of our Year of the Dealer Project digital trails (see Year of the Dealer Project) – at the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight, near Liverpool. Richards sold a large amount of ‘antique straw-work’ objects to Sir William Lever in 1915, one specimen of which we have included in the Year of the Dealer trail at the Lady Lever (see below). So, keep your eye out for the official launch of the Year of the Dealer trails this summer.

Mark

Early 19th century Straw-work box. French. Sold by Samuel Richards to William Lever in 1915. Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight. Photograph, Antique Dealer Research Project, University of Leeds.

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Tags: A W Little, antique dealer catalogues, BLSC, Haddon Hall, John Bedford, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Samuel Richards, Simon Myers, The Old Friary, Year of the Dealer

December 30, 2022

Happy New Year to all our readers!

2022 is coming to a close – so we’d like to wish all readers and followers of the Antique Dealer Research Project blog a very Happy and Healthy New Year!

We thought a fitting image for a Happy New Year is the advertising calendar, produced by the antique dealer Charles Morse, for his very first antique shop, ‘Mr Pickwick’s Antiques’ in 1947 – and thanks again to Charlotte Morse (and Ben) for so kindly letting us use the image again.

Calendar, 1947, ‘Mr Pickwick’s Antiques’ (Charles Morse). Image courtesy of Charlotte Morse.

We will continue to post on the Research Blog in 2023 with our usual selection of posts on the history of antique dealing and various related themes. In April 2023 we will reach the 10th (yes 10th!) anniversary of the Antique Dealer Research Blog. Over the years we have amassed an archive of blog posts amounting to more than 120,000 words, and several hundred images – and in that time we have had more than 70,000 visits to the Research Blog – thank you all that read the blog!

Early in 2023 we’ll have some exciting news to report on the on-going Year of the Dealer project (see the Year of the Dealer project website at the University of Leeds), with the launch of our Year of the Dealer Digital Trails at a selection of our project collaborator museums – so do watch out for news of the Digital Trails in late February 2023.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Mark

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Tags: Charles Morse, Happy New Year, Year of the Dealer

July 20, 2021

Quinneys (2021)- the film!

As you may know, we have been making a film of the play ‘Quinneys’ (1915) at The Stage on campus at the University of Leeds as part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council funded ‘SOLD! The Year of the Dealer’ project. The filming was completed on 2nd July and we are now in the process of editing all the sections of film and creating the final version of Quinneys (2021). We are aiming to premiere the film later in the year, probably in November or December, at a cinema in Leeds, and, hopefully also in London – do keep you eye on the antique dealer blog and the project website for updates.

Thanks to our amazing director of the film, Dr. George Rodosthenous, all the student actors, Samuel Parmenter (as Joseph Quinney); Hannah Rooney (as Mrs Susan Quinney); Annabel Marlow (as Posy Quinney); Fergus Johnston (as James Miggott); India Walton (as Mable Dredge); Malcolm Webb (as Sam Tomlin); Stephenson Catney (as Cyrus P. Hunsaker); and Sebastian de Pury (as Dupont Jordan) – as well as Samantha Willetts (as Theatre Company Manager and lighting design); Andy Mills (as technician) – and our cameraman Patrick Bannon, we managed to get the film ‘in the can’ over an exhausting 5 days (9am-9pm!) – helped by delicious pizza! Here’s the full cast after filming, on the Quinneys (2021) ‘Sanctuary’ set, with George –

Cast of Quinneys in rehearsal with George Rodosthenous at The Stage, University of Leeds. Photograph, Year of the Dealer project, 2021.

Rehearsals were a real challenge, with all the Covid-19 restrictions and social distancing etc. We had to wear masks when not actually on set and about to film – here’s the actors all masked up early on in the rehearsals:

Annabel Marlow, who plays Posy Quinney (Quinney’s daughter) in the film, was still self-isolating on the first day of filming, so we had to do the rehearsals with Annabel on Zoom via a laptop – a very surreal, J.G. Ballard-esque experience! Here’s Samantha Willetts (Company Manager) holding the laptop with Annabel (‘Posy’) on screen.

Samantha Willetts holding ‘Posy’ (Annabel Marlow) – rehearsals for Quinneys. Photograph, Year of the Dealer project, 2021.

Filming Quinneys was a very complex operation, with some very sophisticated technical kit, and it required very detailed planning and execution – here’s a long shot of the setup for filming, with Patrick Bannon (far right) and the team manning the cameras.

Filming Quinneys. Photograph, Year of the Dealer project, 2021.

And another photograph of Patrick checking the camera ready for filming another scene of Quinneys (2021) –

As well as the actors ‘starring’ in Quinneys the antiques on Set were also key characters in the film, as they were in the original staging of the play in 1915. All the objects on Set were genuine antiques, and, like the original versions of the play in 1915, were loaned by leading antique dealers. In 1915 dealers such as Walter & Ernest Thornton-Smith and M. Harris & Sons loaned antiques. And below is a photograph of the Set for Quinneys’ ‘Sanctuary’ in 2021.

The Set for Quinneys’ ‘Sanctuary’. Photograph, Year of the Dealer project, 2021.

The antiques for Quinneys (2021) were very generously loaned by David Love Antiques, Harrogate, Simon Myers of R.N. Myers & Sons, Gargrave, and Tony Lumb of Charles Lumb & Sons, formerly of Harrogate. We were very lucky to have such wonderful antiques for the Set, and would like to say thank you again to David, Simon and Tony for all their help and support.

Here is a final photograph of all the cast of Quinneys (2021) on Set in Quinneys’ ‘Sanctuary’. We very much look forward to welcoming everyone to the premiere of Quinneys later in the year. Keep you eye on the project website for more details.

Mark

Cast of Quinneys (2021). Photograph, Year of the Dealer project, 2021.

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Tags: Quinneys, Year of the Dealer

May 28, 2021

Quinneys – re-booted – we’re making a film!

We are delighted to announce that the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project, ‘Sold! The Year of the Dealer’ has emerged from hibernation and we have started rehearsals again for the restaging of the play ‘Quinneys’ (1915). Thanks to a further extension to the Year of the Dealer project from the AHRC we can now continue the project, which now ends on 31st December 2021. We will update you on the remaining proposed events and the museum trails later in the summer, but for now, we are all really excited to announce that Quinneys is alive and well.

Rehearsals are currently taking place online via TEAMS – which makes it an interesting if somewhat challenging experience, but our actors and George Rodosthenous, our Director, are doing brilliant work in this virtual space. Here’s a screen shot of the most recent rehearsal, with George (top left) directing the actors, and with Samantha Willetts (top middle) our new Theatre Company Manager and Lighting Designer. The actors are – Stephenson Catney (top right) who will be playing the part of the American millionaire collector Cyrus P. Hunsaker; Sebastian du Pury (bottom left) one of our new actors, playing the part of the American millionaire collector Dupont Jordan; India Walton (centre middle) playing the part of Mabel Dredge, Quinneys’ typist and a love interest of James Miggott in the play; Malcolm Webb (right middle) another of our new actors, playing the part of the antique dealer Sam Tomlin; Samuel Parmeter (left) and Fergus Johnston (right) (centre bottom), playing the parts of the antique dealer Joseph Quinney and James Miggott, Quinney’s workshop foreman, respectively; and Hannah Rooney (left bottom), playing the part of Mrs Susan Quinney. We are missing Annabel Marlow is this photograph (who plays Posy Quinney, the daughter of Susan and Joseph Quinney, and the other live interest of James Miggott) – and there’s a tiny image of me (Mark) in the bottom right corner, taking the photograph!

Quinneys rehearsal on TEAMS at the University of Leeds.

The pandemic has of course meant that we have had to rethink our plans to restage a performance of the play in a theatre – but the exciting news on the Quinneys project is that we are making a film of the play instead. We will be filming Quinneys at the University of Leeds in early July and following that we are planning to have a ‘premiere’ of the film at a cinema later in the year – so do look out for updates on the antique dealer project website antiquedealers.leeds.ac.uk and on this Blog of course.

In the meantime, here’s another photograph of the Quinneys rehearsals on TEAMS, with all the actors – and this time including Annabel Marlow (left centre), who pays Posy Quinney in the play/film.

Quinneys rehearsals on TEAMS at the University of Leeds.

We very much look forward to welcoming everyone to the World Premiere of our film of Quinneys later this year.

Mark

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Tags: Annabel Marlow, Fergus Johnston, George Rodosthenous, Hannah Rooney, India Walton, Malcolm Webb, Quinneys, Samantha Willetts, Samuel Parmenter, Sebastian du Pury, Stephenson Catney, Year of the Dealer

December 17, 2019

Quinneys is now open for bookings!

We thought you would be interested to hear that the bookings for the re-staging of the play ‘Quinneys’ are now open. The performance will be at The Witham Community Theatre in Barnard Castle, County Durham. You can book here:

https://thewitham.org.uk/event/quinneys/

Playbill for the performance of Quinneys at Birmingham theatre in 1925.

As you may know, we are re-staging the play as part of the AHRC funded ‘SOLD! The Year of the Dealer: antique dealers, art markets and museums’ project, which runs until May 2020. The performance will be by student actors from the University of Leeds, School of Performance & Cultural Industries; the play is to be directed by Dr George Rodosthenous, who leads on the MA in Theatre Directing at the University of Leeds.

Quinneys was written as a novel in 1914 by the prolific writer Horace A. Vachell and is about the life and activities of the fictional antique dealer ‘Joseph Quinney’. The play ‘Quinneys’ followed in 1915 and was regularly performed during the period 1915 until the 1950s – it even made it to theatres in New York! The character of Joe Quinney was based on the real-life antique dealer Thomas Rohan, who was trading in Bournemouth and Southampton during the early 1900s until the 1930s – for more on Quinneys and Thomas Rohan do take a look at some of the previous posts in the antique dealers research blog.

And as fiction mirrors fact, the play and the subsequent novel led to the growth in the number of antique shops called ‘Quinneys’ – we have so far traced about 20 shops called ‘Quinneys’ in the UK…as far as we know there’s only one left…Quinneys of Warwick, which is still trading after nearly 90 years!….

We hope that you will be able to make it to the performance of Quinneys. There is a wine reception at 6.30pm, prior to the performance, where you can have a glass of wine and some nibbles and chat and meet with many people involved in, or following the ‘Antique Dealers Research Projects’. The Year of the Dealer project is covering the costs for the wine reception and all performance fees and costs, but as The Witham is a community theatre, we are hoping to support them with some funding and have agreed with them that there should be a nominal £5.00 cost for the tickets for the performance – all the ticket monies will go towards the projects at the The Witham.

The performance will take place on SATURDAY 28th March 2020. Wine Reception at 6.30pm; Play at 7.30pm; close by 9.30pm at the latest.

We do hope that you will be able to make it – and enjoy a rare performance of a key document on the history and characterization of Antique Dealers!

Mark

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Tags: H. A. Vachell, Quinneys, The Witham, Thomas Rohan, Year of the Dealer

November 23, 2019

Year of the Dealer In Conversation event at Lady Lever Art Gallery

The first of our THREE In Conversation events as part of the AHRC funded ‘Year of the Dealer’ project (2019-2020) was held at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, near Liverpool on Thursday 21st November -there are TWO further In Conversation events; one at Temple Newsam, Leeds on Thursday 23rd April 2020; and a final In Conversation at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, on Thursday 7th May 2020.

The In Conversation events are themed around an on-going, public-facing conversation on the historical and contemporary relationships between the art market and museums and the wider research project to investigate the history of antique dealing in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries – a subject explored in the original AHRC funded project ‘Antique Dealers: the British Antique Trade in the 20th century, a cultural geography’ (2013-2016) and the various research initiatives and projects that both underpinned and have been subsequently developed from, this fascinating and previously very little studied area of British cultural life – you can of course follow all the projects associated with this strand of research in our new project website ‘Antique Dealers’ at the University of Leeds.

Our In Conversation at the Lady Lever Art Gallery was focused on the collecting activities of William Hesketh Lever (1851-1925), the founder of the Lady Lever Art Gallery – with a theme of collecting and the art market ‘Then & Now’ – the market for decorative art (or Antiques as one might also call them) in the late 19th and early 20th century and the market for decorative art/antiques today. We had a very distinguished panel of experts for the In Conversation – from right to left in the photograph below are Sandra Penketh, Director of Art Galleries and Collections Care at National Museums, Liverpool; Robin Emmerson, curator emeritus, Lady Lever Art Gallery; Colin Simpson, Principal Museums Officer, Wirral Museums; Prof Nick Pearce, Professor of Art History at Glasgow University; Peter Woods, antique dealer and collector and me – Mark Westgarth, University of Leeds. We also had an excellent and packed audience of interested and interesting people – including lots of people from the local area and with associations with the Lady Lever Art Gallery – but it was good to see people from much further afield too – some had travelled all the way from London and the South East of England! Thank you to everyone on the Panel and everyone who attended for making the event such a success!

In Conversation at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, 21st November 2019.

The discussion and debate was lively and informative, with each of the participants on the Panel offering reflections on the art market, collecting and museums from historical and contemporary perspectives (from various ‘stakeholders’ if you like – museum professionals, academics, and professional antique dealers and collectors) . There were also some great questions from the assembled audience. I don’t think we exhausted the theme at all (certainly not in the relatively short time we had for the ‘In Conversation’) – indeed, its just as well we have many more events and activities as part of the ‘Year of the Dealer’ project!

It was great to see the project had so engaged the participants, and bodes well for future events. I’d like to thank everyone at the Lady Lever Art Gallery – Sandra Penketh, Alyson Pollard, Dave Moffat – and the events team at Lady Lever – Joel, Caroline, Nina and Kimmi – and all the support staff, for all of their help with the development and delivery of the In Conversation. And of course the Year of the Dealer project team, Eleanor, Vanessa, Simon and Gemma, for all their hard work too.

Do keep a look out for future events as part of the ‘Year of the Dealer’ project each of the In Conversation events are free to attend (bookings will open soon for the Temple Newsam and V&A Museum events) – we also have a wine reception for each on the In Conversations (if you needed any further incentive to come along of course!). We hope to see you at Temple Newsam and at the V&A Museum next year. Do keep you eye on the events pages on the Year of the Dealer project website.

Mark

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Tags: AHRC, Colin Simpson, In Conversation, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Peter Woods, Prof Nick Pearce, Robin Emmerson, Sandra Penketh, Temple Newsam House, The V&A, Year of the Dealer

October 31, 2019

Year of the Dealer – Opening Event 21st November 2019

The first event as part of the year-long AHRC-funded ‘Follow-on’ ‘Impact and Engagement’ project ‘SOLD! The Year of the Dealer: antique dealers, art markets and museums’ takes place at the Lady Lever Art Gallery on THURSDAY 21st November at 6.00pm until 8.00pm. The event is FREE – and we also have a free wine reception at 6.00pm – everyone is welcome and you can book your place online at either the Lady Lever Art Gallery website or the YoD Website at the University of Leeds. Here are the links:

YoD In Conversation Lady Lever Art Gallery bookings.

YoD In Converstaion YoD project website bookings.

The YoD project seeks to disseminate the rich seam of research on the history of the antique trade through a series of public engagement events, activities and public museum heritage trails. The collaborating partners are The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, The National Museum, Scotland, Edinburgh, The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Temple Newsam, Leeds, The Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and Preston Park Museum, Stockton. We also have as cultural partners, The Witham Community Arts Centre, Barnard Castle, and The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds; together with one of the world’s leading antique dealers, H. Blairman & Sons, London. The project aims to draw attention to the relationships between the art market and public museums and to share expertise, experience and perspectives among stakeholders. It aims to increase public engagement with the significance of the history of the antique trade in British cultural life.

Our event at the Lady Lever Art Gallery is an ‘In Conversation’ event, which brings together museum curators, academics and art and antique dealers with expert knowledge of the collections at the Lady Lever Art Gallery to discuss and debate the theme of ‘Collecting, Then & Now’. We have brought together an expert panel, including, Professor Nick Pearce, Glasgow University, Robin Emmerson, former curator at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Sandra Penketh, Director of Galleries, Liverpool, Colin Simpson, Curator, Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Peter Wood, Antique Dealer & Collector, and Dr Mark Westgarth, University of Leeds.

The questions to be addressed in the ‘In Conversation’ are based on the premise that in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries William Hesketh Lever, later 1^st Lord Leverhulme, assembled vast collections of antique furniture, decorative objects and paintings, some of which formed the Lady Lever Art Gallery 1922, dedicated to his late wife Elizabeth, but how and what did Lever collect in the early twentieth century?….and if assembling his collections today, what would Lever acquire?…..and what was kind of art market did Lever encounter in the early twentieth century and what kind of art market would Lever encounter today?

We hope it will be a lively and interesting discussion – and of course there is plenty of time to ask questions during the final section of the In Conversation. Do come along, have a glass of wine and listen to what we hope will be a fascinating debate.

The scehudule for the event is:

6.00pm – Welcome, with wine reception

6.30pm – In Conversation

7.20pm – Questions from audience

8.00pm – Close

Hope to see you at the Lady Lever Art Gallery on 21st November; and do look out for future events in the Year of the Dealer project over the coming months. Keep your eye on the Year of the Dealer project website – Year of the Dealer at Leeds.ac.uk

Mark

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Tags: AHRC, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Year of the Dealer

July 6, 2019

Year of the Dealer – Antiques Trade Gazette and the Harewood Library Table and ‘Raynham’ Commodes

Thank you to Frances Allitt and the team at the Antiques Trade Gazette (ATG) for the news piece on the launch of the SOLD! The Year of the Dealer project. Frances composed a short promotional piece in the ATG this week – See – ATG Year of the Dealer. We have been busy in planning meetings the last few weeks, at the V&A Museum, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Temple Newsam and at the University of Leeds, settling on final dates for some of the planned events and activities – you can follow updates on the Year of the Dealer project website – Click Here.

In the coming weeks we are planning further project meetings with the rest of the project partners. There’s still a lot of work to do, but the Year of the Dealer is beginning to take shape and the final lists of the 20 objects that will form each of the proposed curated ‘dealer trails’ through the galleries at the 7 major museum partners are coming together. We can give you an exclusive preview of just one of the 20 key objects identified for the ‘Year of the Dealer’ antique dealer trail for Temple Newsam in Leeds –

And here it is – the famous Library Table made by Thomas Chippendale, c.1770 for Harewood House, near Leeds. The ‘Year of the Dealer’ trail will obviously mention Chippendale in the story about the Library Table but the main focus of the trails will be the stories about the antique dealers that lie behind the acquisition of the objects by the museums. For the Harewood Library Table the story we will be foregrounding is how it was acquired by Temple Newsam through the antique dealers’ H. Blairman & Sons in July 1965. The Library Table was purchased by the antique dealer George Levy, Director of H. Blairman & Sons, at Christie’s auction sale of artworks from Lord Harewood’s estate in London on 1st July 1965 (the table was lot 57). Blairman’s were established in 1884 and George Levy had joined the business in 1949 – here’s the H. Blairman & Sons stand at the famous Grosvenor House Antiques Fair, London, in June 1950, the year after George Levy joined the business.

The 1965 auction sale of the Harewood Library Table generated a great deal of interest at the time – one anonymous reporter writing in Tatler 30th June 1965, the day before the auction, wrote, ‘There is little doubt that such an item will cause a lively stir in the saleroom and I shall be surprised if it does not eventually reach five figures.’ Martin Levy (the son of George Levy), and who remains the owner and director of H. Blairman & Sons, recalls that his father persuaded the group of Yorkshire businessmen who had agreed to support the acquisition of the Harewood table for Leeds Museums & Galleries, that he should bid the agreed limit of 40,000 guineas ‘plus one’ at the Christie’s auction – this was to ensure that if Blairman entered the bidding on the ‘wrong foot’ so to speak – i.e. if they entered the bidding at say 20,000 guineas and their maximum bid was 40,000 guineas, they may end up with a bid at 39,000 guineas, with the opposition having the bid of 40,000 guineas…so a bid of ‘plus one’ would potentially secure the object – indeed, George Levy’s suggestion proved prescient, as the final and successful auction bid was 41,000 guineas!

41,000 guineas (a guinea is £1 + 1 shilling) equated to £43,050 in 1965 and was at the time acknowledged as a world record price for a piece of English furniture. This was indeed an enormous sum for a piece of antique furniture; the equivalent value today would be about £2,450,000 (see Measuring Worth.com). It’s always difficult to work out relative values of course, and the notion of a ‘world record price’ is no less complex – Gerald Reitlinger (The Economics of Taste, volume 3, 1963 and which was obviously published slightly before the auction sale of the Harewood Library Table) cites several ‘world record’ prices for English furniture – (Reitlinger’s data is derived from artworks circulating on the auction market of course…we don’t know about any values from private treaty sales…). Reitlinger cites 10,000 guineas (£10,605) in at an auction in 1928, paid for a Queen Anne console table with matching mirror and torcheres (what is often called a ‘trio’), and sold from the collections of Earl Howe, as the world record auction price for English furniture in the 1920s; although Reitlinger also notes the sale, in 1921, of one of the famous ‘Raynham Commodes’, (also attributed to Chippendale) which made £3,900 (equating to £1,721,000 today).

According to Reitlinger the ‘world record’ of £10,605 of 1928 stood until 1961 when he recorded that one of the famous ‘Rainham Commodes’ (also called ‘Raynham’) was sold in New York for £25,000 – I’m not so sure about this?…According to the newspaper reports at the time (30th June 1961) the piece that sold for £25,000 in New York was, and I quote, ‘an Adam-Chippendale satinwood and mahogany marquetry serpentine-front commode in the French taste. A masterpiece of design probably executed by Chippendale himself.’ The ‘Rainham Commode’ is, as many of you will know, a mahogany commode (sans marquetry) – here’s a couple of illustrations of ‘Rainham/Raynham’ model commodes – left is an 18th century mahogany commode, described as ‘possibly supplied to…Raynham Hall, Norfolk’ and which was sold at Christie’s New York in 1998 (for c. $1,500,000) at the auction sale of the stock of the New York antique dealer French & Co. This commode incidentally was previously in the stock of the antique dealer Walter Waddingham, of Harrogate, in 1955, and was shown by Waddingham at the famous Grosvenor House Antiques Fair in the same year. On the right is an acknowledged ‘Raynham Hall’ commode – this one is now at the Philadelphia Art Museum in the USA, and was acquired in 1941 having been in the collections of both H.H. Mulliner (1861-1924) and William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951).

The history of the ‘Rainham’ and ‘Raynham’ commodes is also complicated by the fact that the well-known collector of English furniture, H. H. Mulliner, purchased Rainham Hall, which is in Essex, in 1920 as a suitable home for his extraordinary collection of antique English furniture; Mulliner’s collection is said to have included a commode from Raynham Hall, Norfolk – so maybe there is more unravelling to do on these ‘Raynham’ and ‘Rainham’ commodes?

The Norfolk Raynham Commode was actually made much more famous in the popular television series’ Tales of the Unexpected (1980), in a version of Roald Dahl’s short story ‘Parson’s Pleasure‘ (1959). In the TV version, in which John Gielgud plays the crooked antique dealer ‘Cyril Boggis’, Mr Boggis stumbles across a piece of Chippendale furniture in an old farmhouse – and the model for the piece of Chippendale furniture is the ‘Raynham Commode’ – you can just see the commode, painted white, in this film still from the episode of Tales of the Unexpected.

Roald Dahl was a very keen collector of antique furniture himself, and specifically mentions the Raynham commode in his short story – as Dahl writes; ‘He knew, as does every other dealer in Europe and America, that among the most celebrated and coveted examples of eighteenth-century English furniture in existence are the three famous pieces known as ‘The Chippendale Commodes’….coming out of Raynham Hall, Norfolk.’ (Parson’s Pleasure, in Kiss, Kiss, p.78). Dahl mirrors the real-life history of the Raynham commode in his story – during the negotiations between ‘Mr Boggis’ and the farmers who own the commode, one of the farmers (‘Bert’) asks his fellow farmer to fetch ‘that bit of paper you found at the back of one of them drawers’ (Parson’s Pleasure, in Kiss, Kiss, p.82) – this proved to be the original bill for the commode, supplied by Thomas Chippendale; mimicking an article by the furniture historian Herbert Cescinsky published in Burlington Magazine in June 1921 which highlighted the presence, then as now, lost, of the original bill for one of the ‘Raynham’ commodes.

But anyway, besides this fascinating interweaving of fact and fiction in the history of the Raynham Commodes, what we hope that the Year of the Dealer trails will draw attention to is the complex relationships between cultural value and economic value. Indeed, if we take the Measuring Worth.com calculations for these auction sale values of English furniture we can see that the notion of a ‘World Record price’ is a notoriously difficult thing to nail down. For example, the economic value of the Queen Anne ‘trio’ sold in 1928 of 10,000 guineas (£10,605) was the equivalent of c.£5,000,000; and the ‘Rainham Commode’ sold in 1961 for £25,000 (if indeed it was the ‘Rainham Commode) was the equivalent of just £1,881,000. So technically the Queen Anne ‘trio’ sold in 1928 still holds the ‘world record’ for a piece of English furniture sold at auction, even surpassing the auction sale of the Harewood Library Table in 1965 (equivalent of £2,450,000).

But then again, there’s more to ‘World Records’ that merely economic calculations; they are complex cultural and social signifiers that both transcend and complexify the blunt instrument of economic value.

Mark

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Tags: ATG, Chippendale, Christie's, French & Co, H. Blairman & Sons, Harewood House, Measuringworth.com, Parson's Pleasure, Raynham Commode, Reitlinger, Roald Dahl, Tales of the Unexpected, Temple Newsam House, Walter Waddingham, Year of the Dealer

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