Young Collectors Night 2013: Can A Young Person Really Afford A $1.2 Million Desk?

One night a year, young people stream into the Park Avenue Armory, a vast, castle-shaped building in Manhattan where snooty Gilded Age families used to hang, to look at, and possibly buy ,the high priced items on display for the annual Winter Antiques Show.

Who are these twenty and thirtysomethings at Young Collectors Night? Would any of them actually drop $1.2 million on a Wendell Castle desk and chair, the priciest item on the block?

There was more at stake than the expansion of collections. All money made from the evening?s ticket sales (at $175 each) would go to East Side House Settlement, a charity that offers classes for underserved kids and adults. The charity, just two subway stops from the Armory's Upper East Side digs, is a world away, in the South Bronx.

Would any of those who stood to benefit -- residents of the poorest Congressional district in the nation -- actually be at the event? We posed the question to Emily Israel Pluhar, one of the evening?s co-chairs, and an East Side House Settlement board member.

Emily, a child psychologist who lives in Boston, is a regular. Each year, her mother Barbara Israel runs a stall at the center of the Armory stocked with garden statuaries -- heavy matter carved into ornamental shapes, or the likenesses of dogs, deer, and other suburban fauna, most of which require multiple union men with tools to move them in. The way Emily described the several hundred-person event made it sound intimate, ?a mecca for meeting lots of friends and people we've known forever.? At the end of the night comes her favorite part: a private guided tour of the stalls with Barbara, who knows every object due to her work as a pre-show ?vetter,? a position of honor that means she determines which objects are what sellers say they are and which aren?t. Emily told us to prepare ourselves for ?glitzy? and ?glamorous.? She doubted any students from the South Bronx would be there.

The day arrived. So did The Huffington Post. A guard outside promised us ?all the shades of New York black? inside, meaning black clothes. From the neck up, the scene diversified in the most limited sense of the word: lots of red lipstick, two rabbit fur stoles, one hat that looked like a bandage for a head wound, one camera obscuring one distinctive face (that of Bill Cunningham, the legendary photographer, who attends each year), and white smiles bobbing in not-quite-unison.

We asked a seller of swords and other hammered metal whether he expected to relieve his stall of anything that night. At the time, he was showing a man who looked to be in his early thirties a 400-year-old German helmet, priced at $90,000. The visitor peered into the bowl of the helmet, and fingered a patch of red lining. ?I expect to sell everything here in the next five minutes,? the seller told us sternly, in a British accent. ?That?s the way to think.?

In the bathroom, women were touching up their red lipstick with more red lipstick. One asked another where she got her pants from. ?I feel like I?ve seen them before," she said.

?I?d be surprised,? said the woman in pants. ?These are Dolce & Gabbana, from ten years ago.? It seemed as if they might argue about it, but just then, a pair of blondes at the mirror started talking about a shade of red lipstick that apparently looks good on everyone. "This party is always pretty fun, and always has good clothes," someone was saying as we left.

Back outside, at a stall draped in 19th century Turkish kilims, we met Jesse, a long-haired young man who once worked for the kilim-seller, and had returned to pitch in for the night. Jesse looked to us like a potential young collector himself, outfitted as he was in a bow-tie that made his long hair look Victorian.

But Jesse assured us he wasn?t, before giving us the low-down on the antique Turkish rug market. Stock comes exclusively from collectors in Germany and Switzerland, according to his experience. ?There?s nothing in Turkey anymore,? he told us. He did not pause for a moment of silence, and so neither did we. Are young collectors truly a viable clientele, we asked, back on point? Jesse shrugged. ?I can?t really say,? he told us, before moving onto a topic that seemed to interest him more, the fact that he makes rap videos now. He told us he was working on a video for Fashion Week.

By now the hors-d?oeuvres had vanished. A nearby 18th century crystal bowl made in England, which had been full of gold-foiled Rolos at the start of the night, was empty. We were drinking on what felt like empty stomachs, egged on by waiters in suits who seemed to be switching out our glasses constantly, each time whispering the new cocktail?s ingredients.

We extracted ourselves from Jesse, who was beginning to feel less like a new friend and more like a lonely kidnapper. A maple gateleg table caught our eye. It stood at the center of a large stall, its elegantly arched legs topped with a plank half smooth and half spider-webbed in white scratch marks. It was the most functional item we?d come across so far in a sea of $1800 porcelain snuff boxes.

A man approached us. ?Excuse me,? he said. ?Are you really interested??

We indicated interest. In a way, we were. Just not to buy.

?It?s $60,000,? he told us. The scratches, he said, were from baking pins. The table?s smooth half had mostly been folded out of sight, in a home in Rhode Island where it had spent most of its days.

He was shouting. ?Diamonds,? the Rihanna song, was on high, spun by someone advertised on an entry sign as DJ David Chang.

We shouted back that we wished we could afford it, and the seller bowed his head with a woeful smile. The song wound down. ?It?s quite alright, that?s how it goes,? he said. Around us, young collectors were collecting their coats, from the coat check.

Days later, a spokeswoman let us know the results by email. No one bought the $1.2 million desk and chair, or a replica of a famous dog sculpture that Barbara had told us was the most interesting piece in her stall. Other fates remained unknown. "Exhibitors can be funny about disclosing sales," the woman wrote. East Side House Settlement, meanwhile, earned $175,000 from ticket sales, nearly enough to buy two German war helmets from the 1600s.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/08/young-collectors-night-2013_n_2643137.html

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