Luxury will survive the current downturn in the market; in fact, it’s expected to thrive at the Historic Alexandria Foundation’s annual antique blowout later this month. Reflecting on the current world financial crisis, organizers of the antique show settled on a theme that would speak to the unsettled markets and uncertain times: "Life’s Little Luxuries."
The show is being billed as comfort food for the soul, using the retail therapy to thwart economic worries. For three days in mid-November, the Holiday Inn on First Street will host more than 40 dealers offering fine examples of antique furniture, glass, ceramics, textiles, rugs, silver, clocks, prints, paintings, jewelry, folk art and nautical items.
"We recognize what a hard year this is," said Mary Sterling, executive director of the Historic Alexandria Foundation. "So instead of being extravagant, we wanted to focus on little things in life that make you happy: enjoying a a good wine with friends, a breakfast room that makes you smile, a small garden with beautiful flowers, a warm bed where your dog is curled up at your feet."
The catalogue for the show creates these moods in several still-life montages that display items that will be for sale during the show. Each sets a scene and tells its own story. One called "La grande bouffe" features a table with an opulent silvers service and vivid bouquets to to welcome a distinguished French friend who has just been inducted into the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur in Paris. "Wake-up Call" sets the scene with a dog named Snickers curled up at the foot of his master’s bed. "Constant Gardener" celebrates the great outdoors, and "Oktoberfest" conjures up ghosts real and imagined in true Halloween spirit.
"It’s all about little luxury, and we even used little lettering on the invitations," said Sterling. "Sometimes it’s the small things that can make you very happy."
<b>IN HER INTRODUCTORY</b> essay to the catalogue, Laura Dowling cites a poem by Charles Baudelaire as making a compelling case for life’s simple luxuries in the refrain luxe, calme, et volupte – luxury, tranquility and pleasure. Titled "L’Invitation au Voyage," in poem Baudelaire invites his beloved to escape with him into an imagined place of beauty and order where all desires are met, the air is calm and perfumed, the language is soft and sweet. In this seductive world of Baudelaire’s imagination, life’s greatest pleasures are intangible and universal delights.
"Even Baudelaire would concede that writing with a vintage Mont Blanc pen, sipping tea from an antique Limoges cup, or reading an old leather-bound volume of Maupassant, provide subtle, long-lasting pleasures that add richness and depth to our lives," wrote Dowling, owner of Intérieurs et Fleurs.
This year’s show has been expanded and will include a wine tasting and a celebrity chef cocktail party. The event will kick off Nov. 13 for a preview party at 6:30 p.m. Tickets for the preview party are $150 per person. Farrah Olivia Chef Morou Ouattara will lead a cocktail party in Belle Haven on Nov. 14 at 4 p.m. Tickets for the cocktail party are $125 per person. A historic townhouse on lower King Street will be the location for a wine tasting starring wine expert Mari Stull — better known as the famous "Vino Vixon" — and a silent auction featuring a print by noted artist Christopher James Ward. Tickets to the wine tasting are $75 per person. Interior designer Wayne Zeigler will speak about "New Ways to Design with Antiques" on Nov. 15 at 9:30 a.m. Tickets to the lecture are $10 per person.
"Life’s Little Luxuries is about celebrating things that are accessible," said Dowling, who teaches at L’Ecole des Fleurs in Paris. "It’s about looking for those moments in the day when you can take time off and detach yourself from your cell phone or your Blackberry."