EconomyFinancialMorton Auctions: It all started with some catalogues, a...

Morton Auctions: It all started with some catalogues, a tarp and a stolen car

Luis López Morton is an inveterate collector. His office proves it: paintings and photos hang on the walls, and the tables and bookcases are full of horse sculptures and figurines acquired at auctions. The businessman has spent decades ‘hunting’ artistic pieces of these animals. But it is not the only thing. A huge chandelier that hangs from the double-height room of his company’s headquarters, a grand piano and even his desk were also purchased at auction. “You could furnish an entire house with second-hand items,” he says.

The founder of Morton Auctions is convinced that good buyers are those who appreciate quality, more than the smell of new. There are items that increase in value over time, such as works of art; although others lose it when they enter the second-hand market, such as decorative items or tableware. The key is knowing when it’s time to buy and when to sell. And he has been doing it for more than 30 years.

Works by Diego Rivera, Francisco Toledo and Dr. Atl, first editions of books, jewelry, collector cars, porcelain items, furniture, wines and musical instruments have paraded through the auction room of his company. He has also sold the black silk stockings that Maximilian of Habsburg wore when he was shot in 1867, on the Cerro de las Campanas. “There is a market for everything and everyone,” says the businessman. “Many buyers look for a connection with an object or a person, because of what it symbolizes for them. Others just want to show them off at home.”

López Morton conducts around 80 art and antique auctions a year. He says they are a good way for people to get a fair price for their items – unlike a pawn shop, he says – while buyers benefit from the opportunity to influence the price of the product. In the middle is the auction house, which gets a commission on every item sold.

A cold December night

Art and antiques auctions are a global business that rakes in about $50.1 billion a year, according to the 2020 Art Basel & UBS report, but in the late 1980s there were no companies dedicated to it in Mexico. Some objects were sold through antique dealers or in art galleries. Given the opportunity, López Morton founded in 1987 the auction house that now bears his family’s surname. It started as an antiques house called the Louis Morton Galleries and on December 6, 1988 it held its first auction.

“It was a disaster,” he remembers. “We made a small catalog with some photos of the 100 lots that we were going to auction. We print 1,000 black and white catalogs. We put half of it in one of the partners’ cars, but when we left the car had already been stolen with the catalogs inside.

Very few people attended that first exercise, most of them family and friends. “There was no auction hall or professional auctioneer. It was very cold and we only had a tarp. We sold 35% of the pieces. We ended up giving away a lot of the stuff.”

The following year he held two more auctions and in 1990 he held the first of modern art. He learned as he went and understood the three keys behind a successful bid: the item, the starting price, and the auctioneer.

“Not everyone can get on the stage, they have to be someone charismatic, who knows how to ignite the spirits and have the pulse of the room to know how far to raise the bid and when to stop it,” says López Morton. “All auctions are different. Our job is to turn what people bring us into money.”

The company also has appraisers specializing in modern and contemporary art, antiques, jewelry and wines. In addition to searching for works and negotiating with clients, they carry out market analyzes in order to establish an appropriate price. “We are a reference in market value. Almost always the works and objects remain within the range that we establish”, says Sofía Duarte, manager of the Modern Art department.

The company’s most important event is Latin American art. The last one was held on November 18, when 187 pieces were put up for sale, including El duelo, by Rodolfo Morales, La chica del diablito 3, by Jorge González Camarena, and Before the storm, by Tomás Sánchez, a Cuban landscape artist whose nothing had been auctioned for six years. Two sketches by David Alfaro Siqueiros were also offered, with a starting price of half a million pesos, where he depicts the distribution of the Poliforum murals.

Although Morton has become a benchmark in art auctions, the essence of the business is antiques. Every Saturday it offers around 300 lots of second-hand objects, from first editions of books and paintings to furniture, crockery or decorative items. Most of the objects are owned by people who want to sell them. “Divorce and inheritance are our main source of items. We don’t really choose what we sell, but what comes to us”, says the businessman.

In addition, companies such as Bimbo or FEMSA hire their services to auction fleets of delivery vehicles. Others, such as the Volkswagen Group, have bid on special editions of some cars, such as the Porsche 911 ‘One of a Kind’, a unique model made in homage to the Mexican driver Pedro Rodríguez, or the latest Golf GTI produced in Mexico.

digital future?

The impact of the pandemic was seen in art galleries, but less so in auction houses. Several of them, like Morton, knew how to read the market and quickly moved into the digital world. One of the keys for a family business to guarantee its permanence is knowing how to adapt to changes, says Ernesto Bolio, a professor in IPADE’s Business Policy area. “Those who don’t are doomed.”

Online auctions kept business afloat during the lockdown. And now, Eduardo López Morton, son of the founder and one of the house’s four auctioneers, is exploring new business areas, such as NFTs, digital files encrypted and authenticated with blockchain technology. The work Viva, by Mexican contemporary artist Juan Carlos del Valle, was the first NFT auctioned in Mexico. It reached a value of 90,000 pesos in a bid organized by Morton.

But Luis López Morton is a fan of face-to-face bids. She likes to attend them, visit flea markets, and read about art. Thus he developed a keen eye for buying. Among his latest acquisitions is a porcelain horse for which he paid 800 pesos, a third of the price he had seen in stores. It is inevitable to ask for advice to make a good purchase. “I always say: buy what you like. That is the best investment.”

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