On a sweltering summer afternoon, Cultural Counsel’s Senior Vice President Hunter Braithwaite hopped on a Zoom call with Laura Doyle, CEO of DOYLE Auction House. Founded by her father, William Doyle, in 1962, Laura spent her childhood accompanying him to various auction houses and exhibitions and rifling through the knick-knacks he kept in his office cabinets. DOYLE specializes in jewelry, fine art, and distinguished collections, but for Laura, “collecting has always been about the stories.”

Hunter Braithwaite: Laura, what was it like growing up in the auction business, and what were your earliest encounters with collectors or with collecting?

Laura Doyle: It was magical to grow up and run around this building that we’re still in on 87th Street, going to different auctions that we did on premises outside of the city and auctions here in our existing space, and then clients’ homes. I accompanied my dad, and during the exhibitions, I hung out and was in his office. He always had a lot of things in a cabinet in his office. He was a fan of the instant collection. He would buy a collection from a client, and then we would suddenly have that collection, like Tartanware, for example. Or he bought a collection of dolls for me once.

HB: If collecting is a journey, what, from your perspective, constitutes that first step?

LD: You buy your first piece, whatever it is, and it’s the second piece that makes it a collection. Is there a thread between them? do they have something in common? Do you find that you’re drawn to the same artist or the same type of object? How do they speak to each other? For collectors who really get excited about collecting, it's never finished. And there are some collectors who are very disciplined, which is always shocking to me. They’ll be like, “I’ve completed this collection of this certain type of prints from this period of time, and I have exactly what I want. Now, I will sell this collection, and I'm going to start collecting something new.” That's interesting as a collecting style. Mine is much more eclectic. It's much more random, and it’s not intentional. I think of myself more as a shopper than a collector.

HB: What are some objects you've collected that you've seen yourself in over the stages of your life?

LD: I grew up with traditional paintings and furniture in our home. So the first pieces that I bought weren't traditional. Those, to me, felt like a big step because it's easy to buy more of what you know or is familiar to you. It's harder to take a risk. Some of those things would be like the CRASH painting that I have. It was graffiti, and it also referred to Franz Kline, who I thought was interesting and used less traditional materials like spray paint and house paint. I bought it at auction.

It's become even more interesting to me as our company has developed a relationship with CRASH. He's done two murals for us and an eighties New York piece for our ‘80s New York sale last fall. I also thought the Tristan Eaton ‘Botched Operation’ I bought from Opera Gallery was very cool.

HB: Are there any types of collectors or types of collections specific or archetypically that you're jealous of or that you envy? Like, “Oh man, I really wish I had this collection of tiny pewter pigs.”

LD: I love jewelry. My eye is probably best suited for jewelry. So often, the things that I love in a sale are the ones that go much higher. I do think that kind of eye for value is a key part of what we do in our business. My dad had an incredible eye for value. He could see it even if he didn't know what it was. I do have fantasy collections of art. For a while, it was like a Cecily Brown with a [Willem] de Kooning, and now, Flora Yukhnovich. She's very contemporary. There is a Renoir kind of fleshiness to those that exist on a continuum.

HB: I love the intergenerational play here. I feel like any considered collection of art, jewelry, furniture, or anything does that and allows you to almost play God historically or chronologically. Putting everyone in the same room is putting them in the same moment.

LD: It's not that it’s so much about each individual one; it’s just how they relate to each other.

HB: What about that eye for value? From your perspective, both personally and at the helm of DOYLE, how have you seen the market change?

LD: About ten years ago, I remember saying it felt like the market was on a candy binge and that they were coming to us for a home-cooked meal. And I feel that again. I feel like it’s been on a candy binge, and I think that people are being more thoughtful about what they're buying. There’s a price point where people still feel very comfortable. That’s in the seven figures and below, which is sort of our sweet spot. We see when there’s volatility that there’s interest in prints because people feel safe. We see people feeling comfortable with things that have an inherent value, like jewelry, coins, or silver.

We always see people looking to us for discovery—artists who have been overlooked or undervalued or whose work has gained new meaning in today's context that might not have resonated in the same way previously. The last several years, women artists or a more diverse group of artists have seen a lot of interest from buyers. People are also looking regionally in the U.S., looking to southern artists if they’re from the South, and it brings them a connection to where they come from.

HB: How do changes in the market affect your customers?

LD: I think the market is cyclical. People get really excited and speculative, thinking that everything should go up continually. It’s the same with private equity projections of hockey sticks or whatever that people expect the art market to be as predictable as other financial markets. There’s been a lot of cycles around that in terms of how people are investing in art. Our message has always been: buy what you love. Regardless of market and fluctuations and value, if you buy something that you love, that you want to have in your home, that you want to wear and enjoy and use, you’re immune to those fluctuations because you have a connection to the piece. The other piece of it is that people come to us with an expectation of value. So they're looking for things that they feel... That’s why auction is so important in these markets: because of the variable pricing and the power of the underbidder.
Collecting has this bittersweet quality to it where it’s positive, it’s additive, it’s bringing something into your life, and into your living room. But it’s also attesting to the fact that this thing doesn’t exist in its original context.
My dad always said: “We just borrow these things,” and I think that’s true. We're caretakers. One of the categories that’s the most exciting for people is single-owner collections because they help teach people how to collect. That was a big thing about [Stephen] Sondheim’s collection, seeing how this genius, whom we all know and that we all can immediately make a connection to through his music and his musicals, how he collected and which objects inspired him.

HB: How do you think about auctioning heirlooms?

LD: We get to experience people who are selling for all different reasons. You see something someone’s inherited, like a painting collection or a piece of jewelry, and then that piece in their life becomes a graduate school education, a new home, or the start of another type of collection. If you leave these items of value to your family, they can become seeds for the future. Transferring a collection into something else is kind of magical.

HB: Too often, we focus on death, divorce, and debt. But these objects can transform into something else.

LD: I think of it as freedom. That’s the other piece, particularly women and jewelry and seeing so many women buying for themselves. I love that as a mom of four daughters.

HB: How would you recommend people get started with vintage jewelry?

LD: Look at a lot of different things. Your eye definitely develops over time. It’s like art. You develop an instinct for it, a sense of stones, a sense of things, where the value and the piece don’t jive. Talk to our specialists. They look at so much stuff that they can also be huge resources. It isn’t as easy to find and learn about the marks on jewelry. You really have to see the different shades of stones to develop that instinct. But the other thing that the jewelry market has is labs; so, if you're buying a stone, there are things that are knowable. There are things that are gradable. You’re not going to get a grade on a Rothko. The value is different in that way. There is an intrinsic value. There is a weight to the gold. There are measurements to the stones, and there are makers that have more value than others. There’s always a lot of opportunity in things that are unsigned. Sometimes, I buy things that I like the look of, and they’re unsigned, so they’re affordable.

HB: Something like a diamond or maybe something like gold has been pretty much a constant in human history. What about other types of stones?

LD: We’ve seen a huge rise in colored stones. It’s particularly sapphires and rubies, but also stones like aquamarine are really popular. They’re much better value than some of the other stones. That 1950s and 1960s kind of aquamarine jewelry is very popular right now. People are also consistently interested in natural pearls. That totally changed throughout my career. When I first started, nobody had any interest in natural pearls. But as the market has become much more global, and particularly as the Middle East and India has become more active, that has reignited interest.

HB: Tell me about pricing strategy—the Patek Phillipe I saw in the catalog will surely go for five times the estimate.

LB: Maybe, maybe not. That’s the appeal of auctions, and we put the prices to draw the widest audience. That's what people expect from us: attractive estimates. When we are too tight on the reserve and the market price of something, it doesn’t sing. It doesn’t have the energy. We’re creating desire, and we want to create desire amongst as many people as possible because that’s what makes an auction work.

HB: Creating desire. It’s a bit of theater, right?

LB: The worst thing that happens in an auction is you get one bid because nobody feels good about that. The power of the underbidder is the best thing about auctions. The people who feel the least happy with their purchase are the ones bidding against the reserve. It doesn’t mean that that’s not worth that price. It just doesn’t have the same energy. So, for an auctioneer, having a lot of bidders participating and feeling engaged is good for everybody actually. It is good for the bidders, and it is good for the sellers and it is good for the auction house.

HB: I want to ask you about that box in your collection.

LD: The box was the first thing that my dad bought at auction when he was nine. He went to his first auction with his great aunt, and he was bidding on this box, and then there was a bidding war, and everyone started shouting. “Let the kid have it, let the kid have it!” Then he gave it to me when I was nine.

I keep coming back to that box and re-curating some of the things that go in it. It came with my dad’s baby spoon in it when he gave it to me. Then, a matchbox from my wedding and other little special ephemera. A box is such an interesting idea: a vessel of its own collection within a collection.

HB: It could have been any object, a geode or a Ty Cobb rookie card. But he got a box, and you got a box. I love it. Anything else to leave the readers with? Things that you’re excited about the future of collecting?

LD: I’m excited about Gen Z. They are interested in objects, in sustainability, and in history. They have the potential to be the next great collecting generation. It feels very authentic. We’re seeing some really junior collectors. Someone showed up with all his Bar Mitzvah money, and he wanted to buy a rare book. Someone else was saving his money to start a coin collection. It’s super exciting to know that in such a digital age, people are interested in objects and things. With all that's being talked about with the great wealth transfer, this is going to be an engaged audience. It’s not just digital; it’s not just the metaverse. They’re interested in real things.