Balzer, the owner of the company "Artekvar" remembers with particular pleasure. In October 2007 he exhibited at Rossiyskom antique salon in Moscow full interior dining room from an old French mansion. After taking a room at the Central House of Artists, a dining room looked very impressive: parquet floors, carved table and chairs, sideboard, fireplace, wall panels and lights in the neo-Gothic style. On the first day of the salon is one of the visitors, respectable looking man, asked how much it could cost to such beauty. "Probably more than a million euros?" - He suggested. Balzer called the amount below € 400 000. According to the antiquary, the visitor was so surprised that he immediately decided to buy everything.
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Balzer does not reveal how many earned the French dining room, said only that the price of antique interiors and individual pieces of furniture seller is the same margin - from 30%to 100%. However, in the first case the value of objects several times higher - from € 150 000 to several million euros. But buyers are much less. For 12 years, "Artekvar" fulfilled about 20 orders for the interiors of the end of the XVIII and XIX century - either wholly original, or amended by its contemporary setting. Balzer also sells antiques separately from old arrays to the cupboard and secretaire. The main income is the same (75%of revenue, the size of a businessman called) brings his modern furniture - a group created by Balzer "Commonwealth Furniture" includes salon furniture "and a network of shops" Cabinet & sofa "and" Hello, the mattress! ".
Graduate Stroganovka Gregory Balzer, opened in Moscow in 1991, one of the first privately owned furniture store and design studio. Once (it was in mid-1990), customers who ordered his design and furnishings of the room country house, wanted more and the old English cabinet. After wanted in London and Paris, the interior has been found suitable.
"We thought that simply collect and bring all", - says Balzer. But the wall panels quickly cracked, twisted, and they had to change. Failure did not deter the entrepreneur. He began to figure out how to work with antique furnishings. Balzer has invested in special equipment, and now he has a laboratory with a staff of specialists, which tend to restore and adapt the old things to the modern living conditions.
On search, removal, transportation, restoration and assembly of any of the ancient interior y "Artekvara" takes at least a year. Often, the interior is required to increase in size. Thus, the area referred to the dining room was equal to 47 square. m, and set it should have been in the 60-meter room. Manufacturer Balzer made of wood trim the same house additional panel and parquet, and instead of painted wall plaster, which was impossible to carry, use fabric wallpaper with an identical pattern.
In half the cases the owner of Artekvara sells interior, purchased as a reserve. He has a warehouse equipped in the former bus depot on the outskirts of Moscow. Now, for example, there is stored an English pub atmosphere 1830. Balzer has no doubt that he could successfully her up. What is interesting: despite the abundance of antique dealers in Russia, here he has no competitors. "The compilation of antique interiors Dozens of people, but carries in its entirety only he, - said Maxim Boxer, a board member of the International Confederation of antique and art dealers. - Why? This is very troublesome, very different business. "
It is not only the complexity of work, adds Michael Perchenko, gallery co-owner of "Old Masters". Buy interior entirely not every antiquary strength. According Perchenko, Balzer helped acquainted with Bernard Steinitz - the world's largest seller of the old interiors. The first time it has been his representative in Russia, took antiques on commission or redeemed with the installment plan. Chapter "Artekvara" does not deny that is friends with Steinitz and many projects done in conjunction with it. As for the cost of procurement, then, according to Balzer, a rare interior is always possible to find an investor.
"Of course, much easier to buy a chair - sell high chair", - says Balzer. For the fifth year, he engaged in the most cumbersome to its orders - Movement of the hunting lodge of the old estates in Ireland. Indeed, the whole house, from basement to roof, in Russia. It remains only to re-build and furnish. "Sometimes I think that this is a job for abnormal - recognized businessman. - On the other hand, it still feeds. And good food ».