COLLECTING:Michael Mortell is making a career of his passion for 20th century furniture and objects, he tells DEIRDRE MCQUILLAN
SUCCESSFUL FASHION designers often become furniture collectors. The Parisian couturier Jacques Doucet in the 1890s became an important art connoisseur and commissioned Eileen Gray among others.Later, Coco Chanel became as well known for her love of Coromandel screens as Helena Rubinstein did for African art. In recent years, Karl Lagerfeld’s disposal of his collection of modernist furniture and decorative objects fetched €7 million in Sotheby’s, and the celebrated so-called “sale of the century” – that of the private treasures of Yves St Laurent and Pierre Bergé – netted €360 million in February 2009.
Irish fashion designer Michael Mortell turned his back on clothing to follow a passion for 20th-century furniture and he has his own gallery in the centre of Dublin.
“Whenever I travelled abroad to fabric fairs, I would always go rooting in shops selling 20th-century furniture – a lot of shops in Paris are specialists. Being reared on US movies of the 1940s and 1950s, such as All About Eve with Bette Davis, I was always in tune with the atmosphere created by those sets. It evoked a rich culture and had an aesthetic feel that I loved,” he explains.
He started collecting nearly 30 years ago and his first significant purchase was a marble and alabaster bust of a girl, which he got in a gallery in Brussels. It has pride of place on a window sill. “I just fell in love with it. I go a huge amount by the eye,” he says.
The turning point came in 2007 on a sunny evening in Paris walking through the Tuileries gardens. “I had just bought a Picasso plate and was walking back to the hotel about 5pm and I just felt so high. I realised that I had moved into this other world now, into a full-time job rather than a hobby. It was a kind of epiphany.”
He opened the gallery in October 2008. “I had been investing for a number of years, selling and trading up. It pays for your education. I always wanted to do this, but if there were Oscars for bad timing, I would have swept the board,” he says ruefully.
Last September, his stand at the Antiques Fair at the RDS was voted stand of the show and a US customer purchased three items from him for his home in Chicago: a Lavery portrait; a bronze table by Dan Johnson; and a Prunier vase.
Mortell’s enthusiasm is infectious, and his detailed knowledge of 20th-century designers and the decorative arts is impressive. He describes himself as obsessive, raves about the wonderful pieces he sees but has no buyer for, and laments the lack of Irish interest in modernist art. “Ireland missed out on the richness of the decorative arts in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s because people had other priorities, least of all fitting out their houses with the new fashions. However, during the Celtic Tiger years when Irish art fetched incredible prices, collectors missed out on opportunities to bring to Ireland some of those decorative arts which have kept up in value.”
His own eclectic mix of treasures include a rare pair of 19th-century Syrian tables inlaid with mother of pearl and tortoise, which are signed; paintings by Lavery, Roderic O’Conor, and Serge Poliakoff; a mid-l800s Chinese head; a valuable Coromandel screen; an art deco console table; some wonderful mirrors and lamps; and a handsome art deco walnut secretaire. “I won’t see a secretaire like this again in my lifetime. These are exclusive items in terms of their rarity in this country. The Coromandel screen is the only one of its kind here,” he says, pointing out the exhaustive workmanship and fine detailing.
One item has a fascinating story. A bronze serpent vase, it is a replica of an item that sold in the YSL auction for €73,000. “I had the pleasure of visiting Yves St Laurent’s home on the Rue Babylone just before the sale and saw this bronze patinated Christofle vase from 1919. I had bought one exactly the same in Ghent for €11,500 four years previously, at an auction. I loved the patina and its simplicity and the combination of Egyptian motifs with art deco. I saw another in a gallery recently in Paris for €25,000.
“The point I am making is that from LA to Tokyo, whether it is Christie’s in LA or Paris, or de Pury’s in London, these pieces are of international interest. The YSL sale was an inflated one, but it would be worth its own value still today. Irish art has bottomed out. I would not get back at all what I paid for it in 2005, 2006 or 2007.”
He describes his gallery as being “like the home of someone who has travelled well and chosen wisely”. The prices may seem high but the value of these objects is not locked into an Irish market, he says. “If I moved to Chicago and I had a home there I could put them into an auction. People say it is expensive, and some pieces are, but it is all relative.”
We talk about why avid collectors suddenly dispose of everything so carefully gathered over the decades. “You do have a moment as a collector when you realise that you are only a keeper of them for a short while, but it is one of the pleasures of life to be surrounded by beauty. I love sitting here. I feel privileged and I say that with all humility. Everywhere I look, I can see something I love, be it a Picasso plate or a vase by Mayodon. Kevin Kelly , who doesn’t throw away compliments lightly, told me that I had a spectacular eye . . . but all I want to do is spread the word.”
The Michael Mortell Gallery, Suite 22, Central Hotel Chambers, Dame Court, Dublin 2
