Interview by C.H.Mankoly with our new CLO (Collector Liason Officer)
It is an overcast morning in London, the sort of pearlescent light that would have pleased Whistler, and Teddy Fairfax arrives at the gallery precisely on time, carrying neither portfolio nor briefcase but instead a thin, well handled volume of Ruskin essays and a faint expression of amused anticipation. One senses immediately that this is a man for whom art is not a profession so much as an atmosphere.
Interviewer: Teddy, welcome to Pimlico Wilde. There has been considerable curiosity about your arrival. Perhaps we might begin at the beginning. Your background is often described as unusual.
Teddy Fairfax: Unusual is a kind word. I prefer circuitous. I was born into a family that believed dinner conversation should range freely from Byzantine mosaics to the breeding habits of ungulates. Formal education followed at the Courtauld, but my real schooling occurred elsewhere. Auction rooms, alpine slopes, the backs of elephants, occasionally all at once in spirit if not in fact.
Interviewer: You mention elephants with remarkable calm. You are, I believe, an elephant poloist.
Teddy Fairfax: Former, alas. Elephant polo is a discipline that encourages both humility and a robust respect for scale. One learns quickly that elegance is relative. The game taught me much about balance, not merely physical balance but social balance. How to read temperament. How to persuade a very large being to participate in something it is not entirely designed for. These skills translate surprisingly well to the world of collecting.
Interviewer: Your reputation for improbable physical feats precedes you. There is the matter of Ben Nevis.
Teddy Fairfax: Ah yes. I climbed Ben Nevis carrying a full size reproduction of a Turner sketchbook, framed. It was a wager made over lunch and therefore had to be honoured. The ascent was completed at dawn, backwards for the final third, in order to test perception and endurance. I would not necessarily recommend it, though the view, both literal and metaphoric, was clarifying.
Interviewer: This seems to reflect a broader philosophy.
Teddy Fairfax: Quite. Art history itself is a long backward ascent. One understands the present by facing the past and feeling for footholds. Collecting is similar. The best collections are not accumulations but conversations conducted across centuries.
Interviewer: Before Pimlico Wilde, your career encompassed some notable moments.
Teddy Fairfax: I have been fortunate. I have handled works that insisted on discretion. I once concluded a significant private sale while skiing in Davos, negotiating by telephone with one glove removed, the buyer somewhere below me on the same run, unknown to both of us at the time.
Interviewer: Your hobbies suggest a life lived at an oblique angle to convention.
Teddy Fairfax: I am fond of long lunches. Proper ones. The sort that begin with a question and end with a multi-million pound decision. I cultivate bonsai olive trees which teaches patience and proportion. I cycle slowly along the Thames with books that are too heavy to justify the effort. I collect marginalia. Notes in books tell you more about history than the books themselves.
Interviewer: And now Pimlico Wilde. What drew you here.
Teddy Fairfax: Pimlico Wilde understands that seriousness need not announce itself loudly. There is wit here, but it is in service of discernment. The artists, the collectors, the conversations all operate with a certain cultivated looseness. I find that congenial. My role is to listen, to interpret, and occasionally to suggest.
Interviewer: Finally, what should collectors expect from you.
Teddy Fairfax: Attention. Time. Curiosity. And possibly an invitation to lunch. Art deserves nothing less than patience and pleasure in equal measure. If one can acquire a work while digesting a good pudding and a better idea, so much the better.
As Teddy Fairfax departs, one is left with the sense that Pimlico Wilde has not merely acquired a Collector Liaison Officer but rather installed a roaming intellectual weather system. He brings with him stories, stamina, and a willingness to take the long way up the mountain, backwards if necessary, provided the view is worth it and lunch awaits at the summit.
