The Gallery

THE GALLERY

The Picasso’s, yes, the Picasso’s. Where to start? It’s so difficult. Where did we start?

We pretty well just drifted into it, into “collecting” and long before our arrival at the hotel.

There was a gradual dawning, a recognition of having an eye. Born with it and daring to believe.

Our accountant said, “Don’t let him into any art gallery,” not knowing sometimes the gallery came to us. We had friends. Friends, natural people not reliant on the education implant that freezes and controls most people. But open people willing to step outside the mainstream, recognising, appreciating. That’s how we got there.

We didn’t see it as an addiction. We bought little things, pictures mostly, some photographs. Some were given to us. Hanging on to and preserving them was difficult. Always in leaky accommodation; always on the brink of nowhere. A vague, almost out of it subsistence survival and struggling. Always over-stretched, always nervously overspent; never thinking tomorrow. Even so if we liked it we got it. Wow. We could never afford it, we knew that. We shouldn’t do it; we knew that too. But we did.

Fast forward and the hotel provided us with walls, lots of walls. And walls were hanging space. They were boring walls anyway and clearly needed something. In addition, we were obliged by our desire for a star rating (an English Tourist Board symbol of recognition) to have a picture in every room as it was on their specification list of standard requirements.

Our first new purchases in this regard came via a friends’ recommendation from the Curwen Print Workshop. Visited by one of their management. we bought quite a number of prints. One of them, a Barbara Hepworth which was en route for exhibition in Holland and would possibly never return. These works were soon in the bedrooms and all around.

To the Picasso’s where I started this. These were bought on Bartercard. Bartercard is a business where goods and services are directly traded for goods and services and the actual costs are worked out in so-called trade pounds, a bit like monopoly money, which are added to or taken from a specific personal Barter account in what amounts to a Barter bank.

The only normal everyday currency involved is commission on sales of 5.5% and a fee on purchases of 5.5%. The whole system could be good but you really have to be careful. It is a buyer beware organisation and there are some very dodgy, difficult devils at large and operating with impunity in its’ embrace.

On the Barter Auction site, Blossom found some Picasso porcelain offered, 2 plaques. We visited the seller by appointment and bought them. They were beautiful line drawings of bulls and still I can’t understand their appeal because I don’t like animals much. Being a vegetarian I always say, “If I liked animals I would kill them and eat them like most animal lovers do.” Notice, after the purchase, I learned through a reputable London auction house they were the genuine article.

Our next Bartercard transaction concerning art likewise involved some Picassos’, parts of the Vollard Suite; 4 prints. These were being offered by an Australian dealer, (Bartercard was, may still be an international organisation) at something over 20,000 Trade Pounds about the right price and irresistible given confidence by the rightness of the plaques. When they arrived we were very pleased. Works good to have and a sound investment. All was well until we urgently needed some cash and then we found out they were not what they seemed. They were photocopies. The paper was wrong, the size was wrong and worst of all the price we’d paid was wrong. Our 20,000 Trade Pounds was reduced to £50 sterling. One snag with Bartercard is you don’t see the goods before you pay for them and once you’ve paid you may get what you’ve bargained for but you may not, and the organisation accepts no responsibility for the characters and behaviour of their members. An effort was made in this instance to achieve justice, we had a conference call with Bartercard headquarters here and in Australia and the seller, and after a lot of argument as a compromise solution it was agreed we would be credited with 10,000 trade pounds and supplied with a genuine but unspecified work of art, could be aboriginal, to the value of 10,000 trade pounds.

Unfortunately, that promise was not kept, and the criminal element got away scot-free. We tried solicitors but they wouldn’t put a case together against Bartercard and distance international litigation was beyond our means. We ran out of puff. We hadn’t the time nor the energy to pursue them. I did however contact the press, our national newspapers, hoping to expose the fraud and the Bartercard company’s involvement. I was dumbfounded when their reporter rang and said “You’ve been conned. So, what! “

Top left, Barbara Hepworth, 'Olympus'.

Top right: Leslie Smith, 'Stourhead'

So, she was a one parent family.

Socially committed, she could only manage limited regular hours. However, in the emergency of being short-handed she intimated she would turn to and help. The offer came with the proviso that she wouldn’t take the extra earning as she would spend the dribs-and-drabs to little benefit. So would we hold the money and pay her a lump, maybe at Christmas. This seemed reasonable, sensible and an altogether admirable symbiosis. We were glad to help and a bit proud to be trusted.

Christmas neared. “I’ve booked a holiday in the West Indies,” she said. “We’ll be away for the whole school Christmas break, three weeks. And she handed us a bill for £3,500.

Very nice!

Stunning.

Come to think of it, I never saw proof of any sort that this sum was actually due. No detailed account. No how-when-why and no warning. No prior notice. No along the way a suggestion or hope-you-realise and no updates. Just 3,500 now or my boyfriend won’t like it insinuations.

Incidentally, the boyfriend who was going on the holiday with her was some sort of psycho, vulgar brute and regular disturbance in the bar.

Only now do I realise the enormity of the demand. £3,500 at the minimum wage of about £7 per hour equals 500 hours which, to aid understanding just assume a 40-hour week, is twelve and a half weeks or over three-months work. Which is beyond belief within the original remit.

We were embarrassed. We didn’t have that much cash. Didn’t know what to do. Didn’t want a bad name for not paying an employee. Didn’t want to let her down. It was after much nail- biting we decided to sell some artwork. There was no alternative. We sold our most cherished pieces, pension-provision pieces, the Picasso porcelain. In a desperate hurry to a Gallery in Hampstead we sold them for £1,700, having paid 9,200 trade pounds for them. That money, with some from our cash flow we paid her instead of paying our beer bill.

At all times she was privy to the parlous financial position of our business.

Shortly after the squander and ten-years-service, she left, claiming the atmosphere had changed.