Salerooms
What's going on at Spink?
Susan Moore
To lose one department may be regard- ed as a misfortune; to lose three looks sus- piciously like carelessness. On 29 February, amid the continuing crisis over the alleged collusion between Christie's and Sotheby's on sellers' commissions, Spink, the grand old firm of London dealers founded in 1666 and acquired by Christie's in 1993, quietly closed all but one of its Asian art departments — effectively withdrawing from a field in which it had been one of the oldest and most powerful players. Accord- ing to Spink's managing director Tim Hirsch, • a former stamp specialist, the South-East Asian, Chinese and Japanese, and Himalayan and Tibetan art depart- ments were closed because they were not sufficiently profitable. The incredulous question this statement begs is, why not?
Not only had Spink, a previously under- capitalised but tightly managed company, never made a loss until it was acquired by Christie's (admittedly, it never made as much as its proprietors hoped either), but the last decade has seen a phenomenal resurgence of interest in the West in what used to be called Oriental art, witnessed by the huge success of the Asian Art Fair in New York and the Asian Art in London initiative, It is something of an achieve- ment for a company with all the advantages of the name and brand-recognition of Spink (it has shown at most of the major international art fairs for years), its grandiose King Street premises and three royal warrants not to have made a killing out of Asian art. Especially given the added resources of Christie's. Since 1993, millions have been invested in — or perhaps, more accurately, thrown at — Spink, and yet its workforce has halved and its art-dealing arm is perilously close to being run into the ground. Ever since Christie's controversial acquisition of Spink, it seems that the auc- tion house has not really known what to do with it.
The deal, as was reported at the time, served two principal goals. First, it consoli- dated Christie's property holdings in St James's, giving the auction house the leases of the entire block. Second, given the belief .of Christie's former chief executive, Christopher Davidge, that the future of the international art market lay in the Far East and Pacific Rim, Spink's contacts in Asia were perceived as extremely useful. No less critically, it provided the auction house with a vehicle for speculative projects principally a potentially exceedingly lucra- tive but, as it turned out, ill-timed venture into the retail jewellery business.
Christie's database revealed that there were tens of thousands of people around the world, not least in Asia, who were interested in buying jewellery, and Christie's thought — one assumes — that this venture into its own, Spink-brand jew- ellery would be an ideal device for servicing its underbidders. The problem was that establishing a name in this highly competi- tive luxury market is an exceedingly costly business — and Christie's was not prepared to pay the price. Moreover, soon after the creation of a glitzy jewellery shop at Spink, the Asian economies went into free-fall and took the jewellery market with them. A year into the venture, the Spink jewellery business went into partnership with dealer Andrew Cohen and relocated to Geneva. The consequent large red blot fell, conve- niently, onto the Spink balance sheet rather than that of the parent company.
Moreover, Spink seems to have suffered as much from sins of omission as commis- sion. Not only, sources say, has its board been emasculated, but it has also received precious little direction from on high. It can only be at the bottom of the list of pri- orities of the Christie's Group under Frangois Pinault. Long forced to abandon the top end of the market through lack of capital, Spink had also lost a good deal of its expertise as various senior figures left the company to set up on their own. The takeover offered a perfect opportunity for Christie's to re-establish Spink as a world- class business, but instead of recruiting high-calibre staff capable of achieving this, or even encouraging its remaining staff to buy the best and take on the big names (as has Spink-Ledger, Spink's fine art arm), Spink King Street has been allowed to bumble along doing more of the same.
Its Chinese and Japanese department has used its new-found capital to run up the quantity of inventory rather than its quality, and bought far more than it could sell. (It seems unlikely that M. Pinault approves of his businesses sinking capital into stock.) Its fall sadly also brings about the demise of a what is a world-class department of Himalayan and Tibetan art, the sums involved in which are just too small to justify an independent business. For in the new Spink, they all have to be independent businesses now that all departments are obliged to leave the King Street site to make way for its redevelop- ment by Christie's. Indian and Islamic art, the only Asian department deemed suffi- ciently profitable, is relocating to a gallery in St James's. Coins, banknotes, medals and stamps, meanwhile, have found a new home, and saleroom, in a former post office on Southampton Row.
Is it pure sentimentality that prompts one to weep over the fate of Spink, when other illustrious names in Oriental art such as Sparks and Bluett have already bitten the dust? I think not. Anyone walking down Cork Street will notice that the splendid Atrium art bookshop, acquired by Christie's 15 months or so ago, has already closed its doors, replaced by the tiny Christie's Books in the King Street foyer. Is this another instance of confused strategy over a non-core business? To invoke poor old Oscar Wilde again, it seems that, within `If you don't improve your sums, you're going to be stymied when you have to start counting your calories.' the Christie's corporate family, it is not so much the parent that is in danger but the progeny.
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