Major Liquidation

An epoch-making wave of liquidation last week hit the market of one of the nation's lesser known commodities. If the U. S. Government abolished its cotton-loan plan or its ever-normal granary for corn and suddenly undertook liquidation of the 10,800,000 bales of cotton or 490,000,000 bushels of corn now held off the market, the decision would be no more extraordinary than that taken last week in another commodity--art.

For decades the art market had its ever-normal granary and his name was William Randolph Hearst.

It was a melancholy day for art dealers everywhere when Hearst stepped out of their market for keeps in 1937. He had purchased better than a million dollars worth of art treasures a year. He had constituted, they figured, about 25% of the international market for odds & ends.

Hearst, who made more money than any other publisher before or since, stopped buying because he was broke.

The income of his 25 newspapers (now 17) and other properties, the profits of the mines he had inherited from his prospector father, were no longer big enough to pay the interest on their debts and his. By 1939 he was in hock to the banks, and employed as editorial director of his own newspapers at a yearly salary of $100,000. For Mr. Hearst, that was chicken feed.

To get $600,000 for spending money, Hearst had mortgaged San Simeon, his vast California estate. In 1938 it was announced that part of his $50,000,000-or-so accumulation of antiques and art objects would be offered for sale. The bulk of this vast, amorphous agglomeration reposed in warehouses--four of them in California, the fifth, a five-story, block-square structure, in The Bronx. It included collections of 504 different kinds of works of art, any one of which would have made an ordinary collector notable.

At least 20 of Hearst's collections were outstandingly good, and five--armor, English furniture, English silver, Gothic tapestry, Hispano-Moresque pottery--ranked among the finest private collections in the world.

Liquidation of the massive conglomeration, enough to fill two whopping museums, went well enough at first. Auctions and private sales in the U. S. and London brought in about $800,000 cash. But the bottomless market which could give Hearst anything he wanted--at a price--couldn't take it back. Dealers were afraid the market's carefully nurtured price structure would collapse under the weight.

Private collectors were finicky in a wartime world. Another market had to be found.

Last week a deal was made. Bernard Gimbel, on behalf of Ginibel Brothers, Adam Gimbel, on behalf of Saks Fifth Avenue, signed a contract to offer the bulk of Hearst's collection* to the public over the bargain counters of Manhattan's Gimbel Bros, department store and its swank subsidiary, Saks. All in all, 10-15,000 items (catalogued in 150 thick volumes) will be available after Jan. 20 at what are promised to be liquidation prices. The merchants and Dr. Armand Hammer, Manhattan art dealer, who priced the collection, will each take a cut on the sales. Said Dr. Hammer: "It will be like . . . going through a museum and finding everything there for sale with a price tag hanging from it." As a device, this sale of art to the public over store counters instead of through the regular channels is parallel to that of raising funds by selling baby bonds to the public instead of floating issues to investors. It taps a new reservoir of cash.

In the art market it has one precedent.

In 1933 Dr. Hammer used a Manhattan department store (Lord & Taylor) for disposing of a much smaller collection of Russian treasures. But whether housewives will plank down their money for medieval cannon, Colonial warming pans, or Egyptian mummies, is a merchandising unknown. They will be tempted with many a small authentic piece such as 18th-Century English pewter plates priced at $3 each. Other items: > An agate bowl mounted in gold, fine stones, brilliants and rubies, with two enameled gold sirens, bearing baskets of fruit, poised on the rim. Attributed to Cellini, it is the only original Cellini cup in the U. S. save one in the Metropolitan Museum. Price: $20,000.

> Sacramenia, famed Spanish Cistercian monastery founded by Alfonso VII of Castile, for sale, knocked down, in 14,000 crates weighing about 500 Ib. apiece--probably the finest remaining whole piece of 12th-Century Spanish architecture. Cost to Hearst: about $500,000. Cost to Gimbel's buyer: a tentative $50,000 plus cartage.

> Three French cloisters; 70 paneled rooms from English, Dutch and French castles; $7,000,000 worth of tapestries by Gobelin, Aubusson, etc.; a Van Dyck painting.

> English furniture by Cabinetmakers Sheraton, Chippendale, Hepplewhite; silver, jewelry, armor, stained glass, and a hodgepodge of valuable and semi-valuable bric-a-brac blanketing the art and decoration of most races and nations from 2500 B.C. to 1912 A.D.

Although Manhattan merchants could not say whether William Randolph Hearst's bargain basement would net him a respectable cash return, they were cer tain that the Brothers Gimbel had turned a smart merchandising trick.

New York City's rich International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union last week offered $100,000 to the city's biggest industry -- its $350,000,000-a-year [wholesale] dress trade -- as a starter on a $1,500,000 fund to advertise the city as the world's style centre, succeeding Paris.

* Owned by a subsidiary company named International Studio Art Corp. and tucked away in The Bronx warehouse.

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