Think of Chinese porcelain and the name of Ralph M. Chait Galleries immediately comes to mind.
The gallery is celebrating its centenary this month with a special exhibition during Asia Week. “The Hundred Antiques: One Hundred Years of Dealing in Chinese Art” is on view at its gallery at 724 Fifth Avenue March 20′6. A commemorative, illustrated catalog accompanies the exhibition.
The exhibition shares the company’s history in a photographic retrospective; as well, it is a selling display of sublime Chinese porcelain and art, the likes of which buyers have become accustomed to seeing offered here throughout the years. The range of objects to be offered include archaic bronze, pottery, porcelain, scholar’s objects and Chinese Export silver.
The gallery was founded by Ralph Chait, who came into the field at the age of 18, newly arrived from London as well as new to Chinese art. “Undaunted and with a remarkable intellect and innate sense of taste and quality, he taught himself and quickly became a knowledgeable, respected and trusted dealer and authority in the field,” said his son, Allan Chait, who has been the company’s president since 1975, when Ralph died.
The gallery has always been a family business, and, today, Allan is still at the helm, along with his sons, Andrew and Steven Chait, who hold key positions in the gallery: Andrew, in administration, and Steven in research and client relations. Allan’s sister, Marion Chait Howe, was an integral part of the business from the 1940s until her death in 1997.
Aided by a cousin in the early days, who had an antiques business that included Chinese art, Ralph Chait opened his own gallery on East 41st Street. The gallery later moved to the East 50s, where it has had several locations over the years.
The “Hundred Antiques” exhibition features archival photographs from the gallery’s various locations, touching on the decades of the 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1960s and 1970s, as well as presenting a snapshot of the many fine works of art that have passed through the gallery over the years.
A fine wooden table that is in the gallery’s office, where clients sit with members of the Chait family to examine pieces, can be seen in several of the old photographs in virtually the same location. “It has been with us from nearly the beginning. My father often remarks of the variety of collectors †from artists, political figures, executives, scholars and connoisseurs †who have sat at this table,” says Steven.
Looking through their archives to find many of these old photographs was a trip down memory lane for the family and made the sense of their history palpable. It also put a fine point on the significance of the gallery’s illustrious “Wall of Fame,” a wall covered with some 30 photographs of well-known collectors and clients the gallery has worked with over the years.
Most of the photographs date to the 1950s and feature such famous collectors and scholars as Frank Lloyd Wright, Adlai Stevenson, Sir Percival David, Winston Guest, Martha Graham and Gustav Adolf (king of Sweden). The first photograph that debuted on the wall was of President Herbert Hoover, a collector of blue and white porcelain, while recent additions to the wall include photographs of Herbert and Florence Irving, renowned collectors and patrons of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Chait has had several collectors with ties to the Met. A 1988 article in The New York Times details the Chinese antiques in the new Charlotte C. and John C. Weber Galleries of the museum. The author mentions the couple’s first acquisition of Chinese art, an Eighteenth Century life-size green and black porcelain frog, a wedding gift purchased at the gallery by the bride’s uncle, Jack T. Dorrance Jr, of Campbell’s Soup fame, who went on to become chairman of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Webers soon became avid collectors of Chinese art, particularly Ming and Ching ceramics, and were frequent visitors at the Chait galleries. They acquired K’ang Hsi porcelains and tall vases that the gallery was dispersing from the Rockefeller collection, the same collection that decades before the Chaits had helped John D. Rockefeller and Nelson Rockefeller to build.
Over the years, the gallery has sold pieces to many major museums, such as the Met, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Freer Gallery, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Norton Museum, the Nelson-Atkins, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as the Peabody Essex Museum.
The gallery has been a longstanding exhibitor at several of the major antiques fairs in the country, including the Winter Antiques Show in New York (since 1960), the International Fine Art and Antiques Dealers Show in New York, the Ellis Memorial Antiques Show in Boston (now defunct), the Asian Art Fair in New York, the Philadelphia Antiques Show and Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show.
The first show it did was the Winter Show, and it was with some reticence that Ralph Chait agreed to do the show, after much prodding from a persuasive and persistent committee chairperson.
Allan recalls his father saw no reason to do a show in New York since he had a gallery there already. “To his amazement, we did business there, even to the point that we had clients come there instead of the gallery,” he said. “It was a good experience and as the show developed and matured over the years, it developed a loyal following,” Steven added.
Allan learned the business under his father’s skilled tutelage and remembers coming to work in the gallery on Saturdays while he was in high school, enjoying the works of art there and learning more. During the Korean war, he was drafted into the US Marines. When he came back home, he joined the gallery full time in 1953, at which time was headed up by his sister and his father.
“It was a wonderful learning experience. My father was our mentor and teacher,” says Allan.
Allan notes that just as he himself was not pushed to join the firm by his parents, Ralph and Libby †he had to ask for it †so too, his sons, Andrew and Steven, also made that choice on their own.
“It’s an extension of your family home life,” said Steven. “As children, we grew up coming to our parents’ gallery as a second home. It was a natural transition.”
Andrew joined the firm in 1982 after graduating college. While business management is his forte, he says he came on board from a pure love of the art, as well as the desire to work with his family. Steven came to the firm in 1989 after graduating college and said he is pleased to continue the family tradition.
Trading in thousands of pieces over the years, there are always a few standouts among all the great works of art the gallery has handled.
Some of the Chaits’ personal favorites include a pair of important imperial Ming blue and white bowls from the Hoover collection that sold to private American collectors, a pair of large Tang stone horse heads now in the collection of the Norton Museum, Palm Beach, Fla.; and a collection of peachbloom glazed vases (Kangxi period, 1662‱722) that sold to Yale Kneeland in the 1920s and 1930s.
As with most in this field, the “fun of the hunt” is what keeps the family members excited about the business, knowing a great work of art might be just around the corner. Ralph Chait’s motto echoes true today: “You have to sell in order to buy.”
Asked what was the most important thing he learned from his father, Allan said, “Developing an eye for quality, integrity and just an approach to the business. It became an enjoyable way of life.”
The gallery is perhaps best known as specializing in Chinese porcelain, but it is also well known for Chinese Export silver, which it featured in a groundbreaking exhibition in 1985 that marked the gallery’s 75th anniversary.
In that exhibition, more than 400 tankards, tea wares, bowls, tureens and other China-made works of silver were shown. At the time, Allan Chait described the medium as the “last frontier of Chinese art.”
As they describe their own collecting tastes, one might be surprised at first to hear that none of the Chait triumvirate collects Chinese porcelain. “My grandfather had a theory that we could never afford to compete with our clients,” Andrew said, so the family did not attempt to buy such pieces for their own collections.
Andrew and his family’s tastes run toward glass and photography, while Allan admits to collecting an “eclectic” mixture. Steven still has young children, but he has a fondness for Chinese decorative painting.
The gallery has ridden many economic ups and downs in its 100 years in business and has stayed the course by sticking to its values and focusing on its specialties.
“One hundred years in business is an extraordinary occurrence for a firm, particularly to stay within one family,” says Allan. “The gallery has witnessed a tremendous amount of history in its field. It has weathered a remarkable variety of world and economic conditions.”
“Throughout this time, it has maintained and enhanced its reputation as experts in the field and as an extraordinary purveyor of fine antique Chinese art to private and museum collectors throughout the world. The gallery welcomes the beginning of its next century.”
For more information, www.rmchait.com or 212-397-2818.
