Who We Are
Leonard & Gail Davenport are semi-retired now, but Leonard has been in business in one way or another for 50 years. Gail became involved over 20 years ago. Our earlier website dates back well over 20 years.
You may have met us at one of the 100s of shows we have done over the years, starting way back in the 1970s with my first wife at The Uptown Armory and Madison Square Garden focusing on Japanese Art and Antiquities, then beginning in the 1990s at the Arts of Asia Pacific in NY, Morristown Armory, regular Pier Shows, Baltimore, DC (RFK and the Convention Center), Miami Beach (original and Airport), Chicago Modernism and the Merchandise Mart, Atlantic City, several other venues in between and in NYC, including the Affordable Art Show, and regular shows in Southampton, Bridgehampton and East Hampton.
For several years, we had galleries: Davenport & Fleming in Southold and then Davenport & Shapiro in East Hampton.
Leonard
I’ve collected since I was a child, bottle caps, SF magazines (after reading them all), baseball cards (flipped for them), then as a teen: antique weapons, Folio Society Books, Associated American Artists prints, fossils and artifacts (only ones I dug myself). An early focus on collecting Japanese Ceramics and fine lacquer led to inspiring and helping a friend go into business as Martin Tener Asian Antiques in early days at shows and later in a NYC center (we both were English teachers).
Rather than compete with my first wife after she joined in focusing on Japanese Art and then continued after we separated, I began to buy post WWII American ceramics influenced and trained by Japanese Masters and AbEx art which has many aesthetic aspects of centuries old Japanese ink paintings.
In the meantime, I bought almost anything that struck me as an artistic vision or rendition out of the ordinary and affordable. We were teachers raising two kids through college and both of us spent as many hours in essentially unpaid coaching, for me that was for a few years stage design and construction and then for many years, advisor to what may well have been the only free high school press in the country at the time.
There’s striking imagination that brings a “Wow … why didn’t I think of that” at prices from $1 to $200,000,000. Market, Class, Money focuses and ignores to create the hierarchy, but if you are struck and love it … you probably are right. Archeologists may not understand or know that a multiple of an Andy Warhol was 10,000 more valuable than … you fill in the blank.
Gail
On our second date for dinner at a local Italian restaurant, well below freezing outside, Leonard asks if he leave something in my living room because it might be damaged by the cold … a mounted 3+ foot picasso-esque New Hebrides Circumcision Mask. A keeper. Until. That’s what is living with art is. You never own it, you are merely custodians, as Leonard says, and adds, “not an original comment.”
As we merged our lives, my mantra when he wanted to buy something was “Well, it’s not a Monet,” so he gave me veto power to kill anything he wanted to buy. At shows, I became the socializer, got to know and absorb many dealer, now friends’, aesthetics. At the gallery, I was the owner/manager, got to sell to customers like Edward Albee! Our home and then homes changed. We live with our ‘merchandise’.
We both had time-consuming outside activities, I became the coach of the Speech and Debate team, and was on the exec committee of two Forensic Leagues and, when Leonard was not involved, he became a regular judge locally and in national tournaments.
As we merged our lives, my mantra when he wanted to buy something was “Well, it’s not a Monet,” so he gave me veto power to kill anything he wanted to buy. At shows, I became the socializer, got to know and absorb many dealer, now friends’, aesthetics. At the gallery, I was the owner/manager, got to sell to customers like Edward Albee! Our home and then homes changed. We live with our ‘merchandise’.