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A Dalva Brothers Wonder Cabinet Turns Heads at Christie's
58 Plays5 years ago
Dalva Brothers, Inc., specializes in the sort of lux 1700s French furniture—ebonized wood, gilded rococo flourishes, parti-colored marquetry—that just screams ancien régime. Some 250 of the choicest items from the firm’s inventory are being offered at Christie’s this October, and Dalva Brothers' principal David Dalva III, along with Christie’s specialist Jody Wilkie, talk with Ben about the crème de la crème: a secretary-cabinet resplendent with Florentine pietra dura figurative panels and gleaming ormolu mounts, possibly handled by noted marchand-mercier Dominique Daguerre.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dalva Brothers Auction
00:00:01
Speaker
Support for Curious Objects comes from Christie's.
00:00:03
Speaker
On October 22nd, Christie's New York will present the live auction of Dalva Brothers, Parisian Taste in New York, a landmark sale of 18th century French furniture, porcelain, and sculpture.
00:00:13
Speaker
The much-anticipated sale will include fine examples of French and European furniture, sevre porcelain, Chinese works of art, clocks, sculpture, and fine art.
00:00:21
Speaker
Viewings are open at the Rockefeller Center galleries by appointment only.
00:00:25
Speaker
In the meantime, explore the sales online at Christie's.com slash curiousobjects.
00:00:48
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:51
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:53
Speaker
What is it that John Lennon, Greta Garbo, and the Louvre Museum all have in common?
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Speaker
I'm sorry, I promise that's not the setup for a corny joke.
00:01:03
Speaker
The answer is that they all shopped at Dalva Brothers.
00:01:07
Speaker
For decades, this New York City family business has been a pilgrimage destination for lovers of antique French furniture and decorative arts.
00:01:14
Speaker
And now Christie's is hosting an expansive sale of some of the firm's extraordinary objects taking place in their New York showrooms on October 22nd.
00:01:23
Speaker
The sale includes some 250 lots.
00:01:27
Speaker
And the estimates range from the thousands to the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Feature on the Secretary Cabinet
00:01:31
Speaker
Lot 65 is a late 18th century secretary cabinet with remarkable Pietro Dura decoration, estimated at $600,000 to a million dollars.
00:01:42
Speaker
Here to tell me what all that means and what makes this cabinet and this sale so special are Jody Wilkie, Christie's specialist and co-chairman of Decorative Arts, and David Dalva, whose last name alone serves as a strong introduction.
00:01:58
Speaker
David, if I were to characterize 18th century English decorative arts with just a few adjectives, I might say something like, restringe, formulaic, precise.
00:02:11
Speaker
And I wonder, how would you characterize the French decorative arts?
00:02:17
Speaker
Well, I would have to say, magnificent, exciting, contemporary,
00:02:29
Speaker
I don't think, you know, they really held back in terms of trying to do the most they could to make a piece, you know, really, you know, a masterpiece.
00:02:44
Speaker
If you look at Louis XIV in Versailles, I think that really set the standard that France followed for the next hundred or so years in terms of the decorative arts.
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:55
Speaker
Well, so tell me about, you know, the Dalva Brothers inventory focuses predominantly on the 18th century.
00:03:03
Speaker
And yet, you know, there were great French craftspeople before and after that period.
00:03:07
Speaker
So what is it that makes the 18th century so special in your eyes?
00:03:12
Speaker
Well, I think they kind of synthesized what it was earlier and really, you know, brought it to a new success.
Craftsmanship and Design Influence
00:03:21
Speaker
And, you
00:03:22
Speaker
I think out of all the decorative arts in Europe, they really achieved, you know, perfection in so many different levels.
00:03:32
Speaker
Porcelain and furniture and textiles and architecture and gardening and everything was done to, you know, very, very high standards.
00:03:40
Speaker
And I think they really excelled at that.
00:03:45
Speaker
And when I asked you earlier for a single piece in the sale that you might want to focus on for this conversation, you didn't hesitate.
00:03:54
Speaker
You went straight for this secretary cabinet.
00:03:57
Speaker
So we'll be talking a lot about it today.
00:03:59
Speaker
But just for starters, can you tell me in just a few words what it is that made that such an obvious choice for you?
00:04:07
Speaker
Was it the value of the piece, its importance, the history around it, its sheer aesthetic appeal?
00:04:17
Speaker
I think there's a lot of different reasons why it's such a great piece.
00:04:21
Speaker
I mean, design-wise, it really brings together earlier periods as well as the neoclassical period that was going on by, you know, the use of the earlier 17th and 18th century Italian Pietradura.
00:04:36
Speaker
Some of the design elements, you know, just really are at the peak of what was happening in the Louis XVI period and at...
00:04:46
Speaker
It's really just overall just, you know, very interesting on so many different levels.
00:04:52
Speaker
So let's, for the benefit of our listeners, let's take a step back and talk about the appearance of the object itself.
00:05:00
Speaker
So Jody, Jody Willoughby, can you tell us what the piece looks like and how large it is and what the images are that are depicted on it?
00:05:10
Speaker
Um, easily.
00:05:12
Speaker
I say easily because there's so much to talk about.
00:05:17
Speaker
Um, if, if anybody's listening and near a computer, if they actually went onto the Christie's website and found the Dalva sale and looked at lot 65, they would find the images that I'm going to try and describe for you.
00:05:30
Speaker
I think one of the words that, um,
00:05:33
Speaker
David could have equally used for describing the French decorative arts was the word exuberant.
00:05:41
Speaker
And yet this piece, because it is slightly later in the 18th century, has a very...
00:05:53
Speaker
You can't say restrained because it has unbelievable layers of decoration.
00:05:59
Speaker
It's basically a rectangular cabinet that sits on top of a table with six legs instead of four.
00:06:09
Speaker
And there is a lower level that's like a stretcher that also serves to support the weight of a cabinet.
00:06:21
Speaker
Pietradura means hardstone.
00:06:23
Speaker
And what this cabinet looks like when you look at the front is...
00:06:29
Speaker
small panels that are basically paintings made out of inset colored stones so that the corner rectangle panels are flowers.
00:06:42
Speaker
In the center, top and bottom, there are bouquets that are tied together with ribbons and leaves.
00:06:52
Speaker
At the side are
00:06:56
Speaker
personages in Turkish garb and in the center is a harbor scene with a little huntsman with a rifle and his dog.
00:07:08
Speaker
And each of those panels, sort of their pictures on their own, almost like little postcards, are set within a gilt bronze frame with an added layer that is beading.
00:07:22
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That entire scene is set within a frame itself that's even more gilt bronze.
00:07:31
Speaker
The word in French is a rinceau, which is when you have a border of a repeating pattern.
00:07:36
Speaker
And with this, it's a pierced pattern.
00:07:39
Speaker
The top of the table that supports it has a fretwork going across that's applied to the drawers that support it.
00:07:48
Speaker
It sounds the way I'm describing it as if it's
00:07:52
Speaker
got so much going on that you can't even look at it, but in person it has this really elegant proportion and
00:08:05
Speaker
It's not overwhelming at all.
00:08:07
Speaker
It really grabs you and makes you, I think tactile might be another word that you could use to describe French furniture.
00:08:15
Speaker
You really want to touch it.
00:08:16
Speaker
There's all kinds of different textures going on and it's just a dream.
00:08:21
Speaker
And all of the colored decoration are more or less at eye level.
00:08:26
Speaker
It's not a huge piece of furniture.
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's a fairly geometric piece.
00:08:32
Speaker
And I like that word exuberant.
00:08:35
Speaker
It's not, I wouldn't say flamboyant in the way that I sometimes think of French decorative arts from this period.
00:08:43
Speaker
It's not sort of going off in every which direction and curling and swirling and all of that.
00:08:49
Speaker
It's fairly staid, maybe, but
00:08:54
Speaker
It's really, it's because it's transitioning between what's called the Rococo, which is that exuberance that you were mentioning, and the neoclassic, which was a looking back into antiquity.
00:09:14
Speaker
And this kind of straddles both fences.
00:09:18
Speaker
The colors of the stones are really rich.
00:09:22
Speaker
The hard stones that are used are lapis lazuli and carnelian.
00:09:27
Speaker
And so there's rich orange and shades of blue and shades of green.
00:09:33
Speaker
And when you look at a photograph of it, you would never think that it was inlaid pieces of colored stone that were making those pictures.
00:09:41
Speaker
Right.
00:09:41
Speaker
They look more like a painting.
00:09:43
Speaker
What's really so exciting about this piece is its appearance is exactly as it was the day it was made.
00:09:50
Speaker
I mean, there's nothing to fade on this piece.
00:09:52
Speaker
The ebony is black, and everything else is ormolu and marble, which, you know, looks as good as the day it was
Preservation and Craft Collaboration
00:10:01
Speaker
made.
00:10:01
Speaker
So it's a very interesting example of a piece of furniture that really retained its original style.
00:10:08
Speaker
look and aesthetics from the ancient country.
00:10:10
Speaker
You know, so many pieces, even the porcelain-mounted ones, the marquetry has faded and the staining has faded.
00:10:18
Speaker
And so you get an idea of what it was like.
00:10:20
Speaker
But with this piece, there's really no question of what it looked like when it was made.
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's a sort of time capsule.
00:10:29
Speaker
Exactly.
00:10:29
Speaker
And the bouquets that I was describing that are tied with ribbons, exactly the same kind of design that you get with marquetry, where you'll have wood doing the same thing.
00:10:42
Speaker
But as David said, originally it was stained and richly colored.
00:10:47
Speaker
And now with time, it's kind of shades of brown.
00:10:51
Speaker
So we've talked about the Pietro Dura, which is sort of the singularly striking visual element.
00:11:02
Speaker
But the origin of this piece is not all with one maker.
00:11:09
Speaker
In fact, the Pietro Dura, as you've mentioned, is Italian, while the woodwork and the Ormolu and the gilding is French.
00:11:19
Speaker
And really, numerous people were involved with the production of the piece.
00:11:25
Speaker
So tell me about who these people were and when they were working and how this all came together.
00:11:32
Speaker
Well, Adam Weisweiler is the evanist.
00:11:37
Speaker
And he's born in Germany and came to France and was one of the premier Ebenezes of the Louis Cez period.
00:11:47
Speaker
Daguerre... And just define the term Ebenez for me.
00:11:52
Speaker
Ebenez is someone who basically works with veneers and are kind of different than joiners.
00:12:02
Speaker
And there was a whole guild system.
00:12:06
Speaker
And many of the greatest makers were foreigners that came to France and settled and did very well making furniture.
00:12:15
Speaker
And, you know, I think the French really were only interested in the end product, you know, who could make the best piece.
00:12:24
Speaker
And lots of these pieces went through many, many different hands to be completed, the bronze makers, the
00:12:31
Speaker
the joiners who put the wood, the cabinet together, and then the people that did marquetry.
00:12:37
Speaker
So it was a very complicated guild system, and a lot of cooperation was needed to make these pieces.
00:12:45
Speaker
And the Pietra Dura itself, that came from Italy, right?
00:12:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:52
Speaker
So the dealer, Daguerre, probably had a collection of these things, just like he did with porcelains and
00:13:02
Speaker
Various designs were presented to clients with different materials, lacquer, marble, porcelain.
00:13:11
Speaker
And basically, the dealers would commission a maker in Ebenus to combine all these elements and make a piece of furniture.
00:13:21
Speaker
Yeah, so we're talking about Daguerre, this dealer, Dominique Daguerre, and would he have originated the idea to create this piece and to commission Weisweiler and others to, you know, create the necessary components and then put them together?
00:13:43
Speaker
Yes, I mean, these things were a continuing dialogue between collectors and the dealers and
00:13:49
Speaker
what was popular, what was doing well.
00:13:52
Speaker
The Steth Factor, I think, you know, Jody can tell you that the plaques were, you know, very expensive to produce and, you know, were really a sign of a luxury item.
00:14:02
Speaker
And so the dealers would buy these and order them, in fact, and then make designs for furniture which would then be sold to the public or to the royal family.
00:14:15
Speaker
So, yeah, maybe, Jodi, maybe you can tell us a little more about the production of those Pietratura pieces, because it really was painstaking.
00:14:24
Speaker
It's hugely painstaking.
00:14:26
Speaker
And let me see how to spot.
00:14:33
Speaker
You have colored stones, and the same way a veneer for wood is a slice, right?
00:14:41
Speaker
So when you have French furniture, you
00:14:44
Speaker
in particular 18th century French furniture, where you'll have these beautiful designs set into the tops or into the drawers or into the sides, there will be a whole design and they work out how to do it.
00:14:59
Speaker
With the Pietradura, it's a similar thing, but they're using colored stones.
00:15:05
Speaker
And if you look at the photograph of these, there's a carnation that is on the bottom flower panel on this piece of furniture.
00:15:15
Speaker
If you think of what a carnation looks like, the petals of the flower are not normally a solid color.
00:15:23
Speaker
You'll get white shading into pale, pale pink shading into darker red edges.
00:15:30
Speaker
That is exactly what the craftsman has been able to attain using colored stones.
00:15:38
Speaker
And if you look very closely,
00:15:40
Speaker
you can see where one piece of stone has been let in next to another, but it's also a question of knowing the stones, knowing how to cut them to take advantage of the natural coloration that comes in the stone.
00:16:03
Speaker
And that is the real problem.
00:16:06
Speaker
art and craftsmanship of it.
00:16:07
Speaker
The difference between Pietradura and mosaic is that mosaic is pictures that are made of tiny little tiles.
00:16:16
Speaker
This is almost more difficult because it's large sections and you need to know the stone and how to cut it in order to
00:16:26
Speaker
to take advantage of the changes in color that are occurring naturally.
00:16:31
Speaker
So how they did that, I mean, to me it's magic, but all of these craftsmen were at the top of their game and you would have somebody like Daguerre that had sort of a stable of people that he worked with regularly and
00:16:51
Speaker
he knew he could introduce new ideas and that they would take those ideas and figure out how to make them work.
00:17:00
Speaker
And it's not that dissimilar, I guess, if you had to think today of what is the equivalent of a Daguerre.
00:17:10
Speaker
He was called a Marchand Mercier, meaning that merchant that was putting everything together.
00:17:20
Speaker
and relying on basically contemporary artists at the time to help him with his vision.
French Guild System and Provenance
00:17:28
Speaker
So not dissimilar today, I guess, to use a contemporary person, somebody like the Lalanne, who would conceive of a crazy idea of making a bathtub that looks like a hippopotamus, but then you need to have
00:17:47
Speaker
the plumber, the metal worker, the enamelor that can figure out how to translate those visions into reality.
00:17:59
Speaker
And that was really what the French guild system was able to do.
00:18:05
Speaker
And there are still vestiges of it around.
00:18:08
Speaker
And it's
00:18:10
Speaker
It's not dissimilar also of something like the House of Hermes or of couture in general.
00:18:16
Speaker
At Hermes, you have the leather people, the wood people, the fabric people, and they all come together to create these singular objects.
00:18:30
Speaker
With the porcelain, similar to the...
00:18:34
Speaker
similar to the hard stones, what you created in the 18th century is what you're looking at today.
00:18:41
Speaker
Anything that's been fired does not change.
00:18:44
Speaker
It doesn't oxidize.
00:18:46
Speaker
It looks today the way it did at the times.
00:18:51
Speaker
And there, you really had that balance between is somebody an artisan, a craftsman, or an artist?
00:19:00
Speaker
Because these objects were going in and out of history
00:19:05
Speaker
uncontrollable very very hot ovens multiple times to create what are basically paintings on ceramic and it's wild how they were able to figure out what would make it work and again porcelain was used with the furniture
00:19:24
Speaker
There was a huge conversation, I'll say, going on between all of these craftsmen.
00:19:32
Speaker
And if you look at the decoration that you find on pieces of porcelain, look at the textiles that were being woven in Lyon, which was the center of the textile industry in France, look at the silver work that's done and even
00:19:48
Speaker
you know, compare the leg of a chair with a candlestick, you can see the cross-pollination going on and stylistically how it all holds together.
00:20:01
Speaker
So we're talking... No, no, I appreciate it.
00:20:05
Speaker
I love that detail.
00:20:06
Speaker
And talking about cross-pollination between different media, different materials, that's always interesting to witness.
00:20:15
Speaker
And it's one of the appealing features of this piece that you have stonework, you have woodwork, you have work with gilding, you have work with ebony.
00:20:27
Speaker
You have, of course, the work to create the
00:20:31
Speaker
Pietra Dura plaques in the first place which are not all contemporary to the piece some of them older to bring all that together is really as you said they were made in Italy they were made at specific workshops that did nothing but the Pietra Dura they were stocked for Daguerre he would buy numerous cabinets and take them apart
00:21:01
Speaker
for Pietradura.
00:21:02
Speaker
The porcelain, he would order whatever the factory could get him.
00:21:07
Speaker
So these were, you know, for the height of French furniture, for you to use lacquer, porcelain, Pietradura, that was much more expensive than using wood and marquetry to decorate a piece of furniture.
00:21:19
Speaker
So these were all considered luxury items.
00:21:23
Speaker
And, you know, the French at that time were incredibly into decoration.
00:21:29
Speaker
I mean, you know,
00:21:31
Speaker
everything was kind of, I wouldn't say competitive, but there was an amazing drive to impress with the clothing, with the property, with the interiors.
00:21:41
Speaker
I mean, you know, you hear stories about Goutier, the bronze maker, and, you know, how, I mean, if you're familiar with the Madame de Barry doorknob that they had at the Frick Collection for their wonderful Goutier exhibition, I mean, the amount of detail was amazing, and
00:22:00
Speaker
You know, that's really what the French decorative arts are about.
00:22:02
Speaker
It's just, you know, the more you look at it on a really great piece, the detail is just astounding.
00:22:11
Speaker
And there were really, there were no corners cut.
00:22:14
Speaker
Everything was about the final product.
00:22:17
Speaker
Yeah, so I want to dive into this topic a little further because we've been talking about this dealer, Daguerre, bringing together all of these components worked by various craftspeople, pulling it all together into a single piece.
00:22:32
Speaker
But Daguerre, I mean, he's Parisian, but he's working with craftspeople from across the continent.
00:22:39
Speaker
He has clients from across the continent from England and
00:22:45
Speaker
He ends up spending a significant amount of time in London.
00:22:49
Speaker
So clearly an international character as much as he's rooted in France.
00:22:56
Speaker
So David, is this cabinet, would you say it's characteristically French according to those terms, the idea of detail and so on that you're describing?
00:23:05
Speaker
Or does it start to represent something like an emerging pan-European style?
00:23:13
Speaker
No, I'd say it's very French.
00:23:15
Speaker
I mean, it's just all about what was going on at the time, bringing together the best craftsmen to make your idea come through.
00:23:28
Speaker
And, you know, the clientele, and there was really no expense spared to give them the best quality products that they could get.
00:23:40
Speaker
And the Gare was
00:23:41
Speaker
supplying George IV and lots of royal patronage.
00:23:46
Speaker
And, you know, the clients wanted to have the best and, you know, he could provide it.
00:23:54
Speaker
So when English clients would purchase pieces from Daguerre, they were doing so because they wanted something very specifically French.
00:24:03
Speaker
Right.
00:24:04
Speaker
I mean, the French led the decorative arts world in the 18th century, I think, hands down.
00:24:08
Speaker
There's no
00:24:09
Speaker
In my mind, there's no question about that.
00:24:14
Speaker
No, everyone would go to France to see what was the newest, and they would then try and replicate it.
00:24:24
Speaker
So you'll get stylistically things made in Germany, in Sweden, in Italy that are inspired by the French, but there tends to be a...
00:24:38
Speaker
I guess you'd call it a lag in their adaptation of it because first and foremost, it came to people's attention in France and then slowly would filter across Europe.
00:24:53
Speaker
And everybody, everybody who's anybody wanted to be the first.
00:24:59
Speaker
So they'd go to France.
00:25:01
Speaker
And Louis XIV and how Versailles was meant to
00:25:05
Speaker
show exactly what mankind could do if they put their minds to it.
00:25:10
Speaker
I mean, it's astounding.
00:25:11
Speaker
And it's just everything since then was keeping up that level of creativity and that quality.
00:25:30
Speaker
I like to take a moment to say thank you for listening.
00:25:32
Speaker
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00:25:41
Speaker
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00:25:47
Speaker
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00:25:49
Speaker
Again, you can see images of today's Curious Object at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:25:54
Speaker
And there's also a listener survey where we'd love to hear from you.
00:25:58
Speaker
Support for curious objects comes from Christie's.
00:26:01
Speaker
On October 22nd, Christie's New York will present the live auction of Dalva Brothers Parisian Taste in New York, a landmark sale of 18th century French furniture, porcelain, and sculpture.
00:26:11
Speaker
Approximately 250 lots have been selected from the firm's extensive inventory of 18th century decorative arts, collected over 80 years and across three generations.
00:26:20
Speaker
Dalva Brothers has sold to many of the world's great museums, such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Versailles, and the Louvre.
00:26:28
Speaker
The much-anticipated sale at Christie's will include fine examples of French and European furniture, porcelain, Chinese works of art, clocks, sculpture, and fine art.
00:26:37
Speaker
Viewing is open by appointment only at the Rockefeller Center Galleries.
00:26:41
Speaker
In the meantime, please dive into curiosities and browse the sale online at christies.com slash curiousobjects.
00:27:02
Speaker
Now, Jody, even when it comes to some of the most fine and valuable pieces, it's not always possible to track the provenance.
00:27:10
Speaker
But with this cabinet, we know, or at least we have strong reason to think that we know, where it resided quite early in its history.
00:27:19
Speaker
Could you walk us through that?
00:27:21
Speaker
What does the provenance look like and what's the evidence for it?
00:27:25
Speaker
Well, the provenance starts with Daguerre, and we know that because he did have a huge clientele in England, and he actually opened a shop in London.
00:27:41
Speaker
And...
00:27:44
Speaker
I believe that it was on his death.
00:27:47
Speaker
At any rate, it was definitely 25 March 1791.
00:27:52
Speaker
This cabinet was sold by Christie's as Lot 42.
00:27:56
Speaker
And in the Christie's catalog of 2020, there is a photograph of that 1791 catalog.
00:28:05
Speaker
What's amusing is that it doesn't look all that different than what our catalogs look like today.
00:28:11
Speaker
And so through that, you can start tracking it.
00:28:15
Speaker
So if it was sold in 1791, for sure, it had to have existed before then.
00:28:21
Speaker
Presumably, it was in Daguerre's stock at that time.
00:28:26
Speaker
Whether he had sold it to somebody before and had brought it back, whether that was where it was starting out, I don't think that anybody knows.
00:28:34
Speaker
But there is an inventory process.
00:28:37
Speaker
for another dealer who was active then and buying a dealer called Roche.
00:28:43
Speaker
And then that was described in his estate inventory that was 1820.
00:28:50
Speaker
Slowly, you can track these pieces.
00:28:53
Speaker
I don't know that we have any confirmed provenance of where it's been from 1820 on.
00:29:01
Speaker
but I believe that it was with the Dalvas for quite a while before David would know better than I where it was acquired.
00:29:12
Speaker
But this business of trying to track provenance is really key, particularly in today's market, because being able to link these objects to the history and the time period in which they were created
00:29:28
Speaker
really does help bring them alive.
00:29:31
Speaker
And it's one thing to read in history books about the various wars in Europe in the middle of the 18th century and how people would have arguments that would erupt and these wars would go on for years and years and years.
00:29:52
Speaker
Until you start thinking about
00:29:55
Speaker
how people lived, where people lived, the furniture that they were sitting on.
00:30:00
Speaker
It allows you to have a real visual picture of how this worked.
00:30:06
Speaker
And the idea of these luxury arts being something that would very much support the reputation of whole countries
00:30:20
Speaker
They were used for diplomatic gifts.
00:30:23
Speaker
They were almost a source of trade and of value, both
00:30:31
Speaker
sort of the psychological value of the French and actual monetary value of the objects that was traded back and forth.
00:30:40
Speaker
And as I say, it's not just the furniture, it's all of these other luxury items that all link together.
00:30:47
Speaker
It makes it come alive.
00:30:49
Speaker
The fact that so much French furniture is not necessarily on a huge scale, but on a small scale, because it was used in homes and it was meant to move around the room, I find fascinating.
00:31:02
Speaker
You know, I'd just like to say that provenance is wonderful, and it really makes a fabulous story.
00:31:11
Speaker
The thing to always look at is the quality of the finished product and how much detail and how much work that they put into it.
00:31:22
Speaker
You could look at a bronze that's chased by Goutier and a bronze that is chased by someone else could be the same model.
00:31:30
Speaker
but it's that detail of finish which really sets the bar.
00:31:35
Speaker
There's so much that we don't know about provenance, but there's so much that is there to look at and to decide whether, wow, this is really an exceptional piece or it's kind of run-in-the-mill piece.
00:31:47
Speaker
Well, and presumably if a piece rises to a certain level of quality, that's a good indication that whatever its provenance was, was probably fairly important.
00:31:58
Speaker
Exactly.
00:31:59
Speaker
All of these things, when they were created, these major objects, they were not made for the man in the street to start with.
00:32:09
Speaker
Number one, the man in the street could never have afforded them to start with, nor would they have had the place to put them.
00:32:19
Speaker
I laugh.
00:32:20
Speaker
With Sevre porcelain, for example, the Sevre factory was very much...
00:32:26
Speaker
supported by the king, supported by his mistress slash best friend, Madame de Pompadour.
00:32:36
Speaker
And at the end of every year, around Christmas time or the very beginning of the new year, the factory would have what I, you know, flippantly call the Tupperware party.
00:32:48
Speaker
And what it was was the factory...
00:32:51
Speaker
bringing out all of its major achievements throughout that year, and they would have a sale.
00:32:58
Speaker
And the aristocracy that was trying very hard to stay in good with the king, whose support of the king
00:33:07
Speaker
meant the difference between being given a little attic room to live in at Versailles or very nice chambers because of the amount of support.
00:33:17
Speaker
They would go shopping specifically because this was the king's factory and they wanted to be seen to be buying.
00:33:26
Speaker
And the Seve factory is fantastic for us now in the 21st century because they do have
00:33:34
Speaker
archival records that are searchable.
00:33:37
Speaker
And it's slightly frustrating because everybody thinks, oh, well, Sev has the sale records.
00:33:42
Speaker
We can just go and look up our piece because they also had a system of marking their pieces where you could tell the year in which it was made.
00:33:51
Speaker
And ideally, the painter who worked on it and the gilder who worked on it
00:33:56
Speaker
The reality is the archives are available, but there are certain chunks of years that are basically Swiss cheese, huge holes in them.
00:34:07
Speaker
Or the descriptions, you have to figure these ledgers were not being written out so that
00:34:15
Speaker
300 years later, we could look through and go, oh, look, my cup and saucer was made by Mr. So-and-so.
00:34:21
Speaker
It was a working ledger for a manufacturer, and the descriptions are pretty bare bones.
00:34:28
Speaker
So you can very often find what you think is probably your object, and very often in comparing prices and decoration, you can fine-tune it,
00:34:41
Speaker
But rarely do you come up with something where you're absolutely 110% sure that this piece written down in the manufacturing records is without any question this piece that you're holding in your hand.
00:34:57
Speaker
But more and more work is done on them, and slowly by process of elimination, we're getting...
00:35:07
Speaker
better and better at finding things in those records.
00:35:11
Speaker
That's funny.
00:35:12
Speaker
I was in just that exact same situation today looking at a piece of what I believe to be William Beckford commissioned silver, and there are matching descriptions.
00:35:23
Speaker
But even if the description matches, sometimes that's not quite enough to get you there 100%.
00:35:29
Speaker
Right, but if you know that this one definitely was Beckford because it went from him to the daughter to the sail and the other one didn't, then maybe you can, it's basically putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
00:35:44
Speaker
And it's one of the things that makes it so much fun.
00:35:48
Speaker
I mean, to me, it's fun.
00:35:50
Speaker
Somebody else might find it to use beyond belief, but I find it really fun.
00:35:55
Speaker
Well, we're all in good company here.
00:35:56
Speaker
Exactly.
00:35:59
Speaker
So let's I want to talk a little bit about the the nuts and bolts of of the auction process.
00:36:05
Speaker
You know, I mentioned at the top of the show that the estimate for this cabinet is six hundred thousand to two million dollars.
Pricing and Emotional Connection
00:36:13
Speaker
And I'm curious from you, Jodi, I'm curious how you arrive at that range.
00:36:17
Speaker
And from you, David, I'm curious how that compares to what a reasonable sticker price would be in a retail setting.
00:36:27
Speaker
And I imagine you've had these conversations between yourselves as well.
00:36:31
Speaker
Many times.
00:36:34
Speaker
I must say, working on the Dava sale has been a real treat.
00:36:39
Speaker
The idea of a sale is something that was mooted in
00:36:43
Speaker
nearly two years ago now.
00:36:46
Speaker
And slowly, slowly, the ideas germinated and it came together.
00:36:52
Speaker
And we created a little team here at Christie's that was working on this particular project and spent many hours at the gallery, both going through the gallery, looking at each object and sitting with David, with his uncle, with his cousin, and
00:37:14
Speaker
and fine tuning what we thought would work best as a sale to put on the market in New York to start this process.
00:37:26
Speaker
And I must say that when the catalog first came out, and for us it was very frustrating because as you know, the sale was originally supposed to take place in the spring and needed to be postponed for obvious reasons.
00:37:40
Speaker
But the minute the catalog kind of hit the streets, as it were, we had clients calling us saying, oh my God, oh my God, I've wanted this forever.
00:37:51
Speaker
And this catalog is beautiful.
00:37:53
Speaker
It's all there.
00:37:54
Speaker
And to us, that meant that we had done what we needed to do, which was to draw attention to these objects and
00:38:05
Speaker
They were, we had long discussions on price and came up with estimates that we felt were realistic for today's market, did justice for the objects, and gave a sense of what, as David was saying, what is the difference between the top of everyone's game, the true, true masterpiece, and the pieces that were
00:38:35
Speaker
still good, but not that top, top, top.
00:38:38
Speaker
And it's a very difficult thing.
00:38:40
Speaker
What you're then talking about is connoisseurship, which is not something that is created overnight.
00:38:47
Speaker
But if the catalog, when someone looks through it, does give a sense of why these pieces are together and where the differences are, because there are several pair of Wormula candlesticks.
00:39:01
Speaker
They don't all have the same estimate on them.
00:39:04
Speaker
What's the difference?
00:39:06
Speaker
We're hoping that we will, with this catalog, also be kind of educating a new generation that hasn't had the possibility of seeing the volume of French decorative arts that used to come on the market 30, 40 years ago on a regular basis.
00:39:27
Speaker
And the way to learn to love this is to see it and to handle it.
00:39:34
Speaker
So we've had, I say we started two years ago.
00:39:38
Speaker
We've had a really great time with it.
00:39:40
Speaker
And our hope is that within the next two weeks, when the sale is over, everyone will also have had a good time and will be geared up for more.
00:39:52
Speaker
And David, do you have anything to add to that on, you know, in particular thinking about the valuation of the cabinet?
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:01
Speaker
I mean, um,
00:40:03
Speaker
You know, putting a price on something is always going to be tough.
00:40:08
Speaker
You know, and you have to find a happy medium.
00:40:10
Speaker
I don't think Christie's or Delva knows exactly what the market's going to feel the secretary's value is.
00:40:22
Speaker
But, I mean, you know, putting a number on some of these things was probably the hardest part of it.
00:40:27
Speaker
I mean, you know.
00:40:29
Speaker
But like I said, you know, you have to let your eye out.
00:40:32
Speaker
talk, you know, and, you know, over 75 years in business, you know, we're not satisfied with run of the no stuff.
00:40:40
Speaker
We really respond to unusual things because sometimes hard to sell things.
00:40:46
Speaker
But, you know, that's what you used to go to a dealer for was their aesthetic, you know, was their eye.
00:40:54
Speaker
And that's why people went to Daguerre, you know, because, you know, he had a fabulous eye and fabulous sense of design.
00:41:01
Speaker
And, you know,
00:41:02
Speaker
It continues to this day.
00:41:03
Speaker
So, you know, pricing, you know, that's really the auction houses specialty.
00:41:09
Speaker
They know the market.
00:41:11
Speaker
But I would just say, look, you know, it's really, it's all about looking at the piece and falling in love with it.
00:41:16
Speaker
All these pieces have been, you know, happily found homes for almost 300 years.
00:41:21
Speaker
And, you know, we're really just, you know, we're,
00:41:28
Speaker
you know, temporary curators.
00:41:29
Speaker
You know, we've been lucky enough to handle the stuff to come in every day and be surrounded by these beautiful things, you know.
00:41:37
Speaker
My grandmother used to say, oh, you know, I love coming to work.
00:41:39
Speaker
It's like an injection of B12, she always used to say, because, you know, we cheered her up just being surrounded by beautiful things.
00:41:47
Speaker
You know, that's what they were trying to do then, and that's what 18th century furniture does now, you know.
00:41:56
Speaker
Even now, all of us here have been working from home since March.
00:42:03
Speaker
And when Christie's finally opened up and I was first able to go out to our warehouse because I had to continue work on the Dalva collection, walking in and being able to see a real object and not a picture on a computer screen was so fabulous.
00:42:23
Speaker
It made...
00:42:24
Speaker
it made what should have been the chore of taking extra images in anticipation of requests be far from it.
00:42:34
Speaker
And it was like, you know, reacquainting yourself with old friends that you hadn't seen in forever.
00:42:41
Speaker
It was really wonderful.
00:42:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:42
Speaker
You know, maybe one of the benefits of this being at home so much is really taking a good look at your surroundings and saying, you know, wow, we're here once, you know, um,
00:42:54
Speaker
Is everything that I have around me, you know, do I love it, you know, or, you know, can I change some things around and, you know, get some beautiful pieces into my home that now that I've been sitting around for six months, you know, I could change a few things.
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:16
Speaker
So we'll see.
00:43:17
Speaker
We'll see.
00:43:18
Speaker
Well, and Jodi, you mentioned, you know, the sale was postponed because of the pandemic.
Adapting to COVID-19 Auction Protocols
00:43:24
Speaker
You know, we've now seen auction houses, including Christie's, adapting to new circumstances and conducting more online sales, online viewings, that sort of thing.
00:43:37
Speaker
There will be an in-person viewing.
00:43:38
Speaker
There's definitely an in-person viewing.
00:43:42
Speaker
And
00:43:42
Speaker
What we are doing, we're being, we've been open now to the public for several weeks.
00:43:48
Speaker
We actually, last night, just had a major sale of 20th century paintings, plus Stan the T-Rex.
00:43:56
Speaker
But what we have done is been extremely, extremely careful about the number of
00:44:07
Speaker
people that we allow into the galleries.
00:44:10
Speaker
And we've set up the viewings for the exhibitions by appointment and the sales themselves are held live the way we've always done it, but the public is not allowed to attend the auction.
00:44:23
Speaker
So bidding can be as always by sending in an absentee bid, by being on the telephone with a specialist or by bidding yourself online.
00:44:37
Speaker
but the public can come to the view, they can't come to the sale.
00:44:41
Speaker
And what we've done is totally rejigged the room so that we can accommodate
00:44:46
Speaker
many more telephone bidders than normal.
00:44:49
Speaker
And each of those bidders has their own six foot table separated from the next six foot table.
00:44:56
Speaker
And so far so good.
00:44:58
Speaker
And I've been making appointments for people to come in to views for the next two weeks because we've got a whole run of sales that are culminating with Dalva and the great 18th century.
00:45:13
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's been interesting to see, you know, sales have actually done maybe better than I would have expected or feared in recent months, in the last six months or so.
00:45:25
Speaker
There have been some quite strong results coming from various auction houses.
00:45:31
Speaker
And so I wonder, you know, the timing, one might have thought that the timing for the sale would be terrible.
00:45:38
Speaker
And yet maybe it's maybe it isn't.
00:45:41
Speaker
I wonder how you're thinking about that and how COVID is sort of changing your overall strategy.
00:45:49
Speaker
We I mean, our overall strategy remains the same in terms of putting things
00:45:55
Speaker
our clients' objects out at what we feel is the best time.
00:46:00
Speaker
But what we're realizing is the whole concept of the auction calendar that used to be a very organized affair, God forbid anything change, has been totally thrown up in the air and does not have nearly the power that it used to.
00:46:19
Speaker
We were having major sales at the end of July and in August.
00:46:25
Speaker
And now these sales that are coming up in October, we're realizing that it is the right time for them because there hasn't been anything of this type for so long that the market, I think, is really hungry for it.
00:46:45
Speaker
But what we've been very careful to try and do
00:46:50
Speaker
make sure that that market does not get indigestion by having too much of any one kind of thing coming at the same time.
00:47:00
Speaker
So even though I say we have other sales that are coming up this week, there's nothing that really has the strength in the 18th century
00:47:11
Speaker
and the breadth of kind of objects that Dalva has.
00:47:17
Speaker
There are old master painting sales coming up.
00:47:20
Speaker
We are selling property from the collection of Jane Reitzman, but nothing that is on this scale with this breadth of
00:47:35
Speaker
object and with the depth of quality.
00:47:39
Speaker
So the fact that it is coming up at the end is kind of the the demiement of the whole season.
00:47:50
Speaker
We're really looking forward to it.
00:47:52
Speaker
I appreciate the French vocabulary.
00:47:55
Speaker
David, dealers, of course, are intimately familiar with the auction process.
00:48:01
Speaker
And yet, this sale is quite a departure from the retail environment that Dalva Brothers has operated in for a long time.
00:48:10
Speaker
So I just wanted to close today just asking you a very general question of how you feel.
00:48:21
Speaker
I feel good.
00:48:22
Speaker
I mean, I'm really excited to see these pieces continue on with their pleasing people.
00:48:29
Speaker
And I think Christie's has been really wonderful to work with.
00:48:33
Speaker
And I know Will Trafford, you know, has always been a huge fan of ours.
00:48:39
Speaker
And so I think everything looks good.
00:48:43
Speaker
I really am looking forward to the next chapter of these wonderful pieces existing.
00:48:51
Speaker
Well, David Dalva and Jody Wilkie, thank you so much, and best of luck with the sale.
00:48:55
Speaker
Thank you.
00:48:59
Speaker
Next episode, we will be traveling to the UK for a conversation with the Fine Arts Society about works by Agnes Miller Parker and Jessica Dismore, so stay tuned for that.
00:49:08
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delotti.
00:49:11
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit, and I'm Ben Miller.
00:49:15
Speaker
Thank you.