UNPREDICTABLE INTERNATIONAL ART + DESIGN FAIR CHARMS

NEW YORK CITY

:The chief charm of the International Art + Design Fair, the wild child from the Haughton family of shows, is its unpredictability. While its 53 exhibitors are largely the same from year to year, their presentations are not. This ongoing visual flux gives the six-year-old show a restless rhythm and a youthfully experimental air while offering a glimpse of the latest decorating and collect-ing trends.

Where the art is concerned, few rules apply. Antique, modern and contemporary; American, Euro-pean, Asian and African - the international lexicon of fine design is the only language spoken at the ever evolving expo, which convened at the Seventh Regiment Armory from October 7 to 11.

The show's sponsor, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in The Decorative Arts, Design and Cul-ture, beneficiary of the charity preview on Thursday evening October 6, is a settling influence helping to unite the disparate displays. "George Jensen Jewelry," which closed at the Bard Center on October 16, and a Bard-organized loan show to the fair of contemporary Swedish silver provided a theme echoed in several booths, from The Silver Fund and Alastair Crawford, both Jensen dealers, and Andrew Hollingsworth, a Chicago dealer in Twentieth Century Scandinavian furniture.

"It's a good year for Jensen," agreed The Silver Fund's Michael James who featured a very rare silver mantel clock, priced in excess of $100,000, designed by Johan Rohde for Jensen in the 1920s. Crawford set a long table with Jensen flatware in different patterns. R 20th Century, a Tribeca gallery specializing in midcentury Modern design, captured the spirit of Scandinavian modern design with a step-dining room appointed with a slender dining table and stylized Windsor-like armchairs.

Overall, the International Art + Design Fair is decidedly French in flavor; top Paris exhibitors range from Alexandre Biaggi, Galerie Boccara, Jacques de Vos and Galerie du Passage to Galerie du Post Impressionnisme, Galerie Dumonteil, Martin du Louvre and Galerie Lefebvre.

Sales of French design included a chair by Louis Durot at Primavera Gallery, a Jean Royere standing floor lamp at Magen H Gallery XX Century Design, a Jean Pascaud mahogany console with gilt bronze details and black opaline glass top at Maison Gerard, and a Raphael cabinet on stand and a Louis Sog-not dining table at Two Zero C Applied Arts of London.

French ebeniste and tapestry traditions mingled at Galerie Boccara, which hung a circa 1950 Aubus-son designed by Mathieu Matego beside a Jules Leleu signed gueridon of 1935 and a Jacques Adnet parchment covered commode of 1940.

Italian design had its day at Brian Kish and Doris Leslie Blau, New York, where a Venini glass chan-delier of circa 1928-30 was suspended over an early 1970s Fontana Arte crystal and steel table. The liquid looking pieces must have been perfect in the West Palm Beach home they once decorated. Kish and Blau's many sales included a desk by Carlo Pagani, sold to a new collector on opening night, and a Battibius armchair designed by Luigi Caccia Dominioni for Azucena.

Donzella, the New York dealer in midcentury modern custom furniture, recreated the Bel Air, Calif, living room of Theodore Rosenson, whose home was published in California Arts & Architec-ture magazine in 1940. Donzella's period-room display included a circa 1938 rosewood and mahogany sofa by Paul Laszlo, upholstered with handwoven fabric. Priced $55,000, the sofa sold, along with a Laszlo four-door storage cabinet, $35,000, and a pair of club chairs.

"Taisho and early Showa objects dating from 1910 to 1930 were created for domestic consumption and have more of a Japanese sensibility," explained Bensheim, Germany, dealer Erik Thomsen. A Nihonga School six-panel screen painted with koi fish was a soothing backdrop to a display of slim bronze vases from the 1930s and an exquisitely lacquered writing box, $48,000.

Thomsen and his colleague Michael Goedhuis, who both deal in earlier Asian art, as well, demon-strated that older is not necessarily better. A vanguard dealer in contemporary Chinese art, Goedhuis devoted a corner of his display to contemporary Japanese paintings, sculpture and ceramics. Contem-porary Japanese ceramics were also a highlight of Melbourne, Australia dealer Lesley Kehoe's stand.

After so many years on the cutting edge, it is hard to believe that firms like Historical Design have become the old guard. Historical Design's mix of Symbolist paintings and a Darmstadt Colony cabinet-on-stand was both opulent and edgy. The collector's cabinet, $175,000, of 1905-07 is a companion to one at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The New York dealers' sales included a shimmering set of hand colored butterfly lithographs by Emile-Alain Seguy.

Another dealer in Secessionist art and design, Rita Bucheit of Chicago, sold a Viennese Art Deco buf-fet with palisander veneer, a cornerstone of her display. New exhibitor SPRL Lepoutre/Yves Macaux sold a pair of Josef Hoffmann cabinets, circa 1906, designed for the apartment of Alfred Roller, one of the founding members of the Vienna Secession in 1897. The Belgian dealers also parted with a Kolo-man Moser armchair of 1902 and a pair of Saint-Saens chairs of 1905.

The International Art + Design Fair is about pushing limits - chronological, stylistic and material. In Jacques de Vos's booth, two Yves Klein Plexiglas coffee tables filled with powered pigment blurred the distinction between fine art, decorative art and craft. At Phurniture, a chest of drawers painted a la Keith Haring had much the same colorful gestalt as a Seventeenth Century Hadley chest in original paint. And though it may have been decorated by Paul Gauguin, a ceramic pot a beurre at Galerie du Post Impressionnisme, Paris, had the same informal charm of a cobalt-decorated stoneware churn.

"We're not locked into an aesthetic. We just enjoy how modernism happened," said Historical Design's Denis Gallion, who might have been speaking for the ensemble cast of the International Art + Design Fair.