Buying antiques can be a tricky pursuit – ingrained with fakery and failure – so you’d be wise to seek the tutored eye of a market expert.
There aren’t many shopping lists scarier than ‘beds, bookcase, tables and chairs’, especially when the word ‘antique’ is at the top. In fact, just sourcing one piece – say a period chest to fit between the windows – is an intimidating prospect to the uninitiated. How do you find quality, rarity and value when you can’t tell Regency from Chippendale, let alone a fake from an original? Add stolen goods to the list of possible disaster purchases and it’s enough to turn most people towards Heal’s….
With so much to consider, it’s not surprising that a new breed of consultant is offering a personal shopper service for art and antiques. Corfield Morris was set up by Tim Corfield, an antiques dealer and restorer, and Daniel Morris a former director of Sotheby’s.
As Morris puts it: ‘We demystify the entire marketplace for buyers. We show them the standard antique fairs, the trade-only dealers, the important sales at Sotheby’s, but we’ll also source things from the States and further afield. And buyers can get as involved as they like. Most people who are spending tens of thousands do want to dip into the search process.’
Eamonn Driscoll works in equities and hired Morris to find him a dining table and chairs. He says: ‘We went around some auctions with Morris and he would put two identical-looking chests of drawers next to each other, one worth £100 and the other £1,000 and explain why the price was so different. One might have had its handles replaced and been French-polished so the original patina was lost – you wouldn’t go near that with a bargepole. Morris saved us from some serious mistakes, but we also realized that the pieces we had already bought were second rate and a bit of a rip-off.’
Morris says that he often suggests pieces that need restoring. For Driscoll, he found a dining table for £3,000, then spent £2,000 getting it restored. ‘The chairs I found for him were stacked up and covered in dust. These things are cheaper because fewer people notice them or are prepared to do the restoration work. But restoration can be a great part of the process.’
Morris will also point clients in the direction of good investment. For those thinking of the resale potential of their furniture, his advice is to stick to the obvious. ‘Furniture will only keep or increase in value if they are top of the range,’ he says. ‘Tables, long sets of dining chairs and dressing tables will always find buyer. But fripperies have a more limited market.’
As with any asset these pieces are worth protecting, which means taking photographs of them the moment they are installed – if they are ever stolen owners can place them on the lists at Trace or the Art Loss Register. ‘We recommend that people register within hours, or at least days, if possible, because these stolen works tend to resurface immediately, or after decades,’ says Bernard.
These lists confirm something interesting about antiques – each piece is identifiable because it is unique. As Driscoll puts it: ‘Unlike modern reproduction or mass-produced furniture, there are stories behind them all. We found a campaign chest, which is a clothes chest taken on military campaigns. It has probably been to Africa and back, and set up in tented accommodation across the continent.’ Surely such a story justifies the cost alone. The tale of a Heal’s chest is after all, not so compelling: production line, packaging, shipping, shop floor.
