Our collections of antique dealer ephemera continues to grow, with the latest addition a sales brochure/catalogue produced by a dealer previously unknown to us (that in itself is most unusual!). The catalogue is undated (as are many of these dealer catalogues) but seems to have been published sometime in the early 1920s. The previously unknown dealer is ‘The Furniture and Fine Art Depositories Ltd.’, who traded from what appears to be an department store (see previous blog posts on antiques in department stores 31st August 2025; 29th April 2021; 2nd November 2014). The shop was located in Park Street, Upper Street, Islington, London N1 (the location has a long association with antique dealing, especially in the Post Second World War period).
The business is not listed in any of the usual antique dealer directories, hence they appear to have been under the radar of the project. The business was established in the 1870s and seems to have been primarily involved in making and selling modern furniture (for which they won medals at the Paris Exhibition 1912 and the International Exhibition in Rome in 1912 – see below) and as general house furnishers; they also sold wallpapers, carpets and were contractors for interior decoration. However, the catalogue that the firm produced is very similar to other antique dealer’s catalogues of the period and is full of interesting examples of antique furniture.
What appears to be different about The Furniture and Fine Art Depositories Ltd., is their mode of business, which, as they state in the catalogue ‘…is not like that of the ordinary dealer in antiques or the general trader.’ As they elaborate, ‘The greater portion of the goods for disposal by the firm are entrusted to it by private owners, who pay a small commission of ten per cent. on sums for which the articles are sold.’ In the catalogue are dozens of photographs of antique furniture alongside a few pieces of modern reproduction ‘Queen Anne’ furniture, so fashionable at the time. For example, a ‘Chippendale Mahogany Settee’, priced at ‘27.10s.0d’; this was from the ‘the Furness Collection’; and an ‘Old Mahogany Circular Pedestal Table’, priced at ‘£15.0s.0d’ (see below):
An ‘Old English Mahogany Tambour Shutter Front Cabinet’ (priced at £12.15s.0d) is listed as from the ‘Earl of Essex Collection, Cassiobury Park’ – the house was sold by the 8th Earl of Essex in 1922 and demolished for its materials in 1927. Incidentally, the famous staircase c.1677-80 from Cassiobury Park (attributed to the carver Edward Pearce) was sold by the antique dealers Edwards & Sons of Regent Street, London to the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1932 (see here). Also in the photograph (below) is a ‘Charles II Oak Chair’, ‘in excellent preservation’, priced at ‘£17.10s.0d.’
Many of the antiques illustrated in the catalogue are rather too generic to be able to trace and locate, but I have been able to find one object illustrated in the catalogue – described (erroneously) as a ‘Chippendale Mahogany Side Table. With heavy marble top. Magnificently carved panelled back, supported by four massive carved legs with claw and ball feet’ – priced at £27.10s.0d’.
The table came up for sale at Bonhams in August 2012 – see description here (see below for the Bonhams photograph) described as ‘A Mahogany Two-Tier Pier Table in the George III style’. The table had by 2012 lost its carved back and the marble was broken in two, but it retained an ivorine label for ‘Furniture and Fine Art Depositories Ltd., Park Street, Islington, By Appointment to H. M. The King of Spain’. Bonhams described the table as ‘possibly adapted from a larger 18th century table’; it sold for £275 including buyers premium. It’s worth highlighting that £27.10s.0d was worth about £5,400 (relative income value) in 1920.
The Furniture and Fine Art Depositories Ltd., catalogue will be joining all the other antique dealer ephemera in the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds in due course.
Mark
antiquedealersblog 