kirkerblog 4.0

A couple of months ago, on the first pleasantly cool day of the season, I put my car's top down and went for a drive to the north side of Lake Travis. I hadn't been out there in years, or at least not since moving back to Austin three years ago, so I was curious to see what had changed. For those of you not familiar with the area surrounding the lake: the south shore, where I grew up, has gotten pretty densely populated with upscale subdivisions and whatnot, and assuming there's not much traffic, you can make it to downtown Austin in 25 minutes. Austin's high-tech corridor along Loop 360 is even closer. As such, the area can support high-end development, and a number of the newly developed lakeside areas have housing prices well into the seven-figure range.

The north shore, however, is out in the freakin' sticks. You have to drive all the way around the lake to get to the towns of Lago Vista and Jonestown. In little traffic that's at least an hour. In rush hour, from downtown, it'd be about two. As such, most of the area has remained undeveloped; most of the housing consists of trailers sitting next to rusted out cars, and basically it's the kind of area where people go to disappear from the world. (Think meth labs.) But then we had this kooky thing called a "speculative bubble," and some real estate folks thought they could turn the most bassackwards part of the sticks into a luxury resort.

During my drive along the shore, I passed a bend and stumbled across what may be the most ridiculous architectural folly I've seen to date: an ultramodern lakefront condo complex that looks like it was airlifted straight from Venice Beach. Construction was clearly finished, but even the quickest of drives-by revealed that nearly all of the units were vacant. I figured it'd be a matter of months before they'd be liquidated at auction. I was right.

Today I stumbled across a blog describing the auction results, which weren't reported in any of the local media. I've witnessed some epic auction failures in my time, but this one seems to top them all. A formerly-$700,000 unit sells for $300,000, and that's the BEST result of the day? And it's bad enough that the auction company not only had to stop the auction, but apparently put in a ringer to buy 60% of the units that by law had to sell under absolute terms? Ooof.

One of the most frustrating parts of my business -- or, I imagine, most businesses -- is dealing with unusually high-maintenance customers. And I think I met my match today.

I have in my possession a most decidedly period early '70s Edward Wormley flamestitch sofa. Although this is not at all the type of thing I'm normally interested in, I made an exception for several reasons: Stephani recommended it (and she's familiar with certain microcosmic vintage collector groups that I am not); the couch is in absurdly perfect condition considering it's original fabric and from the early '70s; and basic nostalgia: my parents literally had the exact same couch when I was a toddler, and my dad's sister took it as a hand-me-down and had it for at least another 15 years afterwards.

It is of course necessary for those of us in the vintage field to be able to establish the provenance (a.k.a. the history) of each item we purchase. If it's been bought from one of the major auction houses, that's generally easy: they authenticate anything coming up on the block, and their authentication methods are rarely, if ever, off. I even just pulled two chairs from a LA Modern auction because they'd been previously authenticated as genuine elsewhere, but LA Modern was unable to do so themselves. For modern vintage, authentication usually involves comparing a design and its fabric (if original, and if it has fabric at all) with that in the original manufacturer's catalog at the time. There are, obviously, exceptions if a piece is something like an Evans or Nakashima one-off.

The problem in all this is when a client asks for proof of authentication, in the absence of original production labels (which original buyers often removed). That's totally fine, but it has its limits. In the case of the flamestitch sofa, I think I hit them. The fabric on that thing is about as unique as it gets. While some more popular mid-century styles have been copied, I've not once heard of anyone trying to copy the plush, etched velour seen on flamestitch, a very specific design that has a small but devoted online fan base. To my potential buyer, in addition to taking multiple additional photos of the sofa, I measured the height of the legs -- this being a particularly involved buyer, she already knew that they came in two heights -- and also checked to see if the cushion was T-shaped (a subgenre I was admittedly previously unfamiliar with - a T-cushion wraps slightly around the sides on each end and is generally a single piece). Anyway, my sofa has all of this and fits the buyers' criteria perfectly.

The problem came down to proof. The prospective buyer asked for a copy of the original purchase receipt. I'm sorry, but in my field that is SIMPLY NOT DONE. Besides revealing tricks of the trade, it's also frankly an insult for the dealer: a buyer doesn't believe a number of perfectly reasonable rationales, and now requires literal truth. There comes a point at any stage of vintage sales that you simply have to demand the maxim of "Trust me." In the case of the flamestitch sofa, I've established myself as a dealer, noted that the sofa is in absurdly mint condition, and pointed out that I'm confident in its provenance that I'd provide a refund if it turned out the couch was fake. But it's not, which I already know, and furthermore the likelihood of someone faking that exact fabric and style are slim to none.

I don't know yet whether the buyer will accept my offer. I'm just lamenting that we got this far to begin with.

After last month's somewhat mixed results at the Wright and Rago fall sales, I was wondering whether last week's spectacular Sotheby's contemporary art sale would represent a comeback for furniture and design as well. The answer, based on the results of Saturday's Phillips de Pury Design sale, appears to be "yes." As a reminder, Phillips' Design sale last fall basically crashed and burned, with 44% of lots remaining unsold, even ones by the usually reliably blue-chip Jean Prouve and Charlotte Perriand.

This year's auction started out pretty slowly, with most lots selling for under the low estimate (note that sale prices listed on Phillips' site include the 25% buyer's premium) or not selling at all. But then click to page 2: it's like a freakin' rocket took off! Prouve came roaring back with a table estimated for $7K-$9K selling for $26K (before buyer's premium). A remarkably basic Prouve office chair sold for $25K, well over the high estimate. And on it went from there: a handful of lots went unsold, but most that did sell sold for either the upper end of the estimate range or well beyond it. The sale also featured the return of my favorite auction highlight, the batshit-crazy-priced bidding-war item. Then came another. And another. And although it wasn't last in the show, I was saving it for last here: a pair of Royere goat hair chairs that sold for nearly half a mil (including premium).

Total sales for the day: $3.6 million, versus $2.2 million in last December's Design sale and $2.1 million this past June. With all due respect to LL Cool J, I call that a comeback.

Kirk Gallery may be closed, as of 5pm Sunday, in bricks-and-mortar format, but it lives on in cyberspace -- and I've moved on much more quickly than expected. Today I found out that I've been approved to start selling vintage on Bond & Bowery. Those of you familiar with Manhattan probably know that it's an intersection (one that happens to be four blocks from my old apartment there), but it's also an international online marketplace for good modern vintage. It's one of several competitors that have popped up the past couple of years to compete with the field's 100-pound gorilla, 1stdibs.com, but at a far lower cost to dealers and with a much less rigid management structure. 1stdibs requires that their own photographers shoot each piece featured on their site, for instance -- a key reason they can only feature dealers from a couple dozen cities throughout the world -- and also that all dealers maintain a storefront, even though some of the best antiques & vintage dealers only sell privately. Although 1stdibs is finally covering Austin as of a couple of months ago, I already knew I'd be closing my gallery's physical location when I heard the news, so even if I wanted to cough up their stiff fees, an application would have been moot.

Bond & Bowery's traffic is fairly hefty considering they have a fraction of 1stdibs's amount of dealers or merchandise, and it's used quite a bit in the trade and aficionados in the know who want something immediately and don't want to pay the outrageous prices 1stdibs dealers typically charge (you may remember my rant earlier this year about Todd Merrill, the country's biggest Paul Evans dealer). Our Web site has already gotten quite a bit of exposure, but this should provide it significantly more. I will be proceeding my only bona fide competitor in Austin vintage circles, Austin Modern, onto Bong & Bowery: owner Elle Greene opened a vintage store on Burnet five years ago but ended up closing it last year to go strictly virtual. I'd say my merchandise as a whole is a little more upscale than Elle's (she has quite a bit of stuff I'd classify as kitsch and a much lower percentage of pieces by specific designers, and unlike her I've never sold vintage accessories), but we certainly have quite a bit of overlap.

Anyway, we should have our first pieces up on Bond & Bowery by the end of the week.

Wow. Nothing like the words "final clearance" to draw a horde! I sent out an e-mail to the gallery's customer list yesterday announcing a markdown of everything left on the floor to 50% off; I'm not exaggerating when I say our sales the past two days were better than the previous six weeks. It probably helped that Barkitecture was going on today, plus we had unseasonably gorgeous weather (sunny and mid-70s), but still. Really, though, there are some damn good deals, and I'm raising anything not sold back up to full price on Monday (for Web sales), but it's nice to clear out excess inventory and go out with a solid sales punch.

Eleven days and counting. By the way, I appreciate all the sympathetic calls and e-mails I've received since my last blog post announcing the closure, but really, I'm fine! Nobody died here. Yes, it's unfortunate that a combination of a crappy economy and an implacable landlord is forcing the closure of my gallery, but any stress I had over it has subsided, and people don't need to be walking on pins and needles around me. At this point I'm mainly looking forward to it all being over.

That said, what isn't over is my business of investing in 20th-century design, and once again it's auction season and time to gauge a barometer of where the market's headed. Building on the fairly strong Treadway/Toomey and Rago sales last month, Wright had its biannual Modern Design sale yesterday, which falls in the middle between Mass Modern and Important Design in the continuum of 20th-century design importance. The results of the last Modern Design sale in March were, as a whole, dismal: Eames sold well (with a few notable exceptions, e.g. an Eames lounge chair set selling for an incredibly weak $2,500), but nearly everything else flopped spectacularly, with iconic examples of 20th-century design selling for the single lowest prices I've ever seen, at auctions large *or* small. A Hans Wegner Papa Bear chair -- signed, mint condition, classic black fabric -- sold for a mere $3,250, for instance, not including buyer's premium. (Just to give you an idea how bad that is, a similar one sold last week on eBay of all places for $6,600. The going dealer rate for a mint Papa is about $12,000.) A classic Saarinen Egg chair, also signed, sold for $2,000; while I've admittedly paid less than that for one myself, the one I bought was essentially destroyed and required a Six Million Dollar Man-style refurbishment.

This week's sale? Not only did Eames sell well, but nearly everything else (or at least everything made by well-known designers) sold extremely well. The two Papas on the block sold for $7,000 and $9,000 respectively. A weathered Egg sold for $4,000 -- still well below peak prices, but nevertheless double the sale price of last March. Eames lounge chair prices rebounded; the two on the block sold for $3,250 and $4,250 respectively. Edward Wormley sold remarkably well overall, and even Nakashima made a strong comeback after so many of his lots failed to sell (both at Wright and elsewhere) last spring. The only off-the-deep-end sale price I noticed was a Curtis Jere mirror selling for $8,000 (plus 25% buyer's premium); I've been more bullish on Jere than a lot of people, but even I think $8K for one of their pieces is absurd. What few people seemed to be buying were pieces from the more obscure designers at the sale, some of whom even I've never heard of. (Brazilian furniture may be gorgeous, but unless a given piece was designed by Niemeyer or Rodrigues, its odds on the block are dubious at best.)

On a final auction-related note, I was sad to see recently that one of my best "secret" vintage sources has at last been revealed to the general antiques-buying public. The auction house that lit the whole fuse in terms of my interest in the business was Tepper Galleries, which I found out about three years ago only because I briefly dated one of their auctioneers right before moving back to Austin. Their primary business is pre-20th-c. antiques, but occasionally they hold modern sales -- usually a handful of pieces within a larger antique sale, but occasionally stand-alone modern auctions -- and it was there where I scored my single most stellar deal to date: a pair of Andre Dubreuil Spine chair knockoffs. While they'd be worth an order of magnitude more if they were original, even knockoffs command a massive premiums, given the design complexity involved. 1stdibs currently has a pair of knockoffs listed at $9,500; I paid $80 for my pair. No, that's not a typo. Tepper is actually the oldest auction house in Manhattan, pre-dating even Sotheby's, Christie's and Doyle, but they have steadfastly resisting joining the 21st century and until recently had a Web site straight out of 1995. They didn't even *list* auction items online, let alone sell them there. Alas, they have at long last gotten a clue: their first online auction, hosted by LiveAuctioneers (which hosts Internet auctions for nearly every auction house in the country besides Sotheby's and Christie's, which have developed their own live-auction software), takes place tomorrow. What was formerly an insider secret few people outside of New York interior design circles knew about now has national, and even international, exposure.

Yes, the rumors are true: I'm closing my gallery, at least in its present bricks-and-mortar incarnation. Last day of business will be October 18. You know that "threes" thing I alluded to a couple of blogs back? This is it: my third idea in a row that turned out to be ahead of its time -- and on top of that launched two weeks before the worst economic crisis in 75 years.

There's a simple reason I decided to shutter the place -- the economy sucks, and we don't have enough in-store sales to justify the overhead I'm paying to maintain a large storefront -- coupled with about a dozen much more complex matters, including my landlord's failure to offer me or any other 2nd St tenant any kind of realistic rent relief, as I alluded to both in a recent Statesman article as well as a guest editorial I wrote for the Austin Business Journal (unfortunately the final paragraph somehow got chopped off the online version). I'll elaborate more -- much more -- in the future on what's been going on for most of the past year, and what's going to end up happening as a result, but suffice it to say some much-needed change is already in the works.

Somewhat ironically, August turned out to be our best sales month to date, by a significant margin, and that was during what is typically one of the slowest furniture/home accessories sales months of the year, and without us running any ads or promoting any discounts the entire month. Still, it wasn't enough to justify keeping the business going -- at least in absence of the abatements AMLI should be providing, but isn't.

I'm keeping the gallery's Web site going, however, and will continue to sell the majority of my merchandise online, as well as keep the 20th-century vintage thing going, both in private sales and at auction. The latter is actually recovering from its comatose state, as documented here over the past six months: Rago and Treadway/Toomey had surprisingly strong sales at the first auctions of the season about a week ago, and good work was once again selling at the high end of estimate ranges as well as beyond them. I'm certainly not declaring a permanent uptick yet, but all indicators are for the moment good.

I also have a couple of other things up my sleeve that have nothing whatsoever to do with retail or design, but more on that in a few months.