Brotherton Special Collections | antiquedealersblog

August 11, 2026

Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer 8 – Samuel Richards at Lady Lever Art Gallery

Our next in the series ‘Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer’ is focused on the Samuel Richards film at Lady Lever Art Gallery – you can see the final version of the film HERE

Samuel Richards (1859-1927) is quite well known for a provincial antique dealer and there is a lot of information on him and his antique shops that we could have included in the film – but of course, we needed to keep the films shorter than 3 or 4 minutes; we were thinking that many people might watch the films on their phones so were guided by social media programmes such as TikTok and Instagram on maximum lengths of the films.

We had a lot of images of the hand-drawn, lithographed catalogues that Richards produced from the 1880s to c.1914 – there a small number of libraries that hold a few examples of Richards catalogues (V&A National Art Library in London for example) and the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds holds some copies in the John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History The Library at University of Leeds also has one bound copy very generously gifted to the Brotherton Library by the antique dealer Simon Myers (a great supporter of the antique dealer research project!) – you can read about Simon’s donation in one of the earlier post on the research blog HERE. We have also done a few blog posts on Richards and his catalogues over the years – see HERE. HERE.

Most copies of the Richards catalogues are bound together in hardback volumes but the John Evan Bedford Collection at The Brotherton Library has a few single examples which retain their original covers, exactly as they would have been sent out in the 1890s (see below).

S. Richards catalogue, 1897, cover. Image copyright The Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. Bedford Collection C426.

Such examples are rare with the original covers but the John Evan Bedford collection also has an exceptionally rare large scale single sheet (similar in size to A2 paper size, about 17 inches by 24 inches), ‘Catalogue of Objects of Art and Curiosities’ issued by Richards in the same period – I’m not aware of any other examples in this format (see below).

S. Richards, single sheet catalogue, c.1890s, in the John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History, University of Leeds.

We also had quite a few images of Richards’ shops, many of which we used in the Year of the Dealer film at Lady Lever Art Gallery. One of the images of Richards’ antique shop that we might have used, had we had more space/time in the film, is this image (see below) of The Old Friary, Nottingham c.1900. It’s from Nottingham Local Studies Library and potentially shows the only known image of Samuel Richards (see front, centre), but we decided not to use it as we could not be sure the man in the image was in fact Samuel Richards.

The Old Friary, Nottingham, c.1900. Image copyright Nottingham City Council. Nottingham Local Studies Library.

In subsequent research we have also recently discovered that as well as his 2 shops in Nottingham (The Old Priory and in Houndgate, Nottingham), Richards also had a shop in the ‘Old Baptist Chapel’ on Friar Lane, Nottingham (see below), in what seems like a very early repurposing of a redundant chapel as an antique shop (much more common in the 1970s onwards).

S. Richards, antique shop in the Old Baptist Chapel, Friar Lane, Nottingham, 1903. Private Collection.

Look out for more ‘Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer’ next week.

Mark

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Tags: antique dealer catalogues, Brotherton Special Collections, Houndgate, John Bedford, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Nottingham, S. Richards, Samuel Richards, Simon Myers, The Old Friary, V&A National Art Library

July 27, 2026

Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer 6 – Phillips of Hitchin at Temple Newsam

Here is another blog post in our series of ‘Behind the scenes of the Year of the Dealer’ – this time some further background information on the making of the film focused on the antique dealers Phillips of Hitchin in the digital trail at Temple Newsam. Here’s the finished film on the YoD website.

Phillips of Hitchin is featured in three of the Year of the Dealer films – this one at Temple Newsam, plus one film at Lady Lever Art Gallery and one film at the V&A (we will highlight the other films in later blog posts in the series of ‘Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer’). We were not short of photographs for the Phillips of Hitchin films as we have a very large number of photographs of Phillips’ galleries at The Manor House in Hitchin thanks to Jerome Phillips who so generously donated the archive of the business to the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds in 2015.

However, we needed to be careful about the number of images we included in the final film in order to ensure that the images we did include had sufficient time on screen for the viewers. There were literally scores of images that we could have used, but we hope the ones that made the final cut are interesting enough. Anyway, to whet your appetite for the range of images in the archive (which, just to remind you, you can view by appointment at the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds), here’s a few photographs that did not make the final version of the Phillips of Hitchin Temple Newsam film. Below is a photograph of the entrance hall at the Manor House taken in c.1964, just a few years after the sale of the chair featured in the film to Temple Newsam in 1960.

Phillips of Hitchin, entrance hall at The Manor House, Hitchin, c.1964. Image, Antique Dealer Research Project University of Leeds.

And here is another photograph (see below) of one of the interior showrooms at The Manor House also from the 1960s – this time an image of the ‘Tudor Hall’ (as it was called) in c.1964. [Thanks to our friend Chris Coles we have a fascinating update on the photograph – the Queen Anne suite of furniture at the front of the photograph was from Aldby Park, North Yorkshire – see Adam Calvert Bentley and Ardgowen Antiques]

Phillips of Hitchin, interior of the ‘Tudor Hall’ at The Manor House, Hitchin, c.1964. Image, Antique Dealer Research Project University of Leeds.

The ‘Tudor Hall’ did not really date from the 16th century, despite its appearance, but was constructed in the early 20th century as part of an expansion of the showrooms at The Manor House. In 1910, The Manor House had 50 rooms of antiques (rising to 80 rooms by the start of the First World War in 1914/15), including specific rooms devoted to the display and sale of ‘Oriental Porcelain’, ‘English Porcelain’, ‘English Pottery’, ‘Cottage Furniture’, ‘Domestic Metalwork’, ‘Oriental Rugs’, as well as rooms fitted out as ‘period rooms’ such as a ‘Queen Anne Parlour’, a ‘Georgian Parlour’, and ‘Georgian’ and ‘Hepplewhite’ bedrooms. It also had an ‘Armoury’ and rooms devoted to ‘French Furniture’ and ‘Textiles’ – so a full range of objects that keyed into major collecting and furnishing interests at the time. By the time that Phillips of Hitchin sold the chairs to the various museums in the 1960s they had become a much more specialised antique dealing business and were one of the leading dealers in antique English furniture.

As you will see in the Phillips of Hitchin film, the chair sold to Temple Newsam in 1960 was one of a set of 6 chairs that were sold by Phillips of Hitchin at the time. One was sold to the V&A, a pair were sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the remaining pair to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. One snippet of information about the image we used in the film showing the pair of chairs in the museum in Melbourne, Australia is that the person reflected in the mirror in the middle of the photograph is actually Jerome Phillip’s wife, Barbara!…..she very kindly sent us the photograph when she was on holiday with Jerome in Australia back in 2022.

Pair of 18th century chairs sold by Phillips of Hitchin to National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia in the early1960s on display in 2022. Photograph courtesy of Barbara Phillips.

There will be more ‘Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer’ next week, so do keep you eye of the blog.

Mark

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Tags: Barbara Phillips, Brotherton Special Collections, Jerome Phillips, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Melbourne, Metropolitan Museum, National Gallery of Victoria, Phillips of Hitchin, Temple Newsam House, The V&A, University of Leeds, Year of the Dealer

August 31, 2025

More Antiques in Department Stores – Debenham & Freebody

A recent addition to the corpus of antique dealer ephemera that the antique dealer project continues to gather is a rare sales catalogue produced by the London department store Debenham & Freebody in about 1910. The small paper catalogue (7.5 inches wide by 10 inches high) has 25 pages packed with images and listings of antiques that Debenham’s offered for sale.

Debenham & Freebody antiques sale catalogue, c.1910. Photograph, Antique Dealer Research Project, University of Leeds, 2025.

The Debenham and Freebody catalogue lists 246 items for sale, almost half of which are antique textiles, lace and embroideries, reflecting the keen interest in such objects in the early 20th century. Indeed, in the Introduction in the opening pages of the sales catalogue the writer emphasises the significance of women as consumers of antique textiles – ‘Ladies who are interested in home needle craft are informed that we have a very large number of quite inexpensive fragments and small pieces of brocades and galons suitable for making up into all kinds of fancy articles.’ Beyond these ‘fragments’ there were many rare items offered for sale, including rare ‘stumpwork’ embroideries and samples of antique lace (see below); the ‘Stuart Embroidered Picture, Subject, ‘Judgement of Solomon’ had a hefty price of £35.0.0. (equivalent at the time to as much as £28,000). The embroidery was also illustrated on the front of the sales catalogue, (see above) emphasising its importance.

It seems likely likely that the ‘Stuart Embroidery’ illustrated in the Debenham & Freebody sales catalogue is the same one that is currently in the St. Louis Art Museum in Missouri in the USA. The subject is of course the same, but the addition of seed pearls around the necks of the two female figures to the centre and to the right suggests that the Debenham & Freebody embroidery and the St. Louis Art Museum example are the same. The St. Louis Museum of Art embroidery no longer has the giltwood frame (which was much later than the embroidery). The provenance for the St. Louis Art Museum embroidery suggests it was given to the museum in 1972 by Mrs. William A. McDonnell (Carolyn Vandergrift Cherry McDonnell), who married William A. McDonell (1894-1988) in about 1919; Carolyn’s husband was a prominent railroad executive and banker. It is not known who McDonnell purchased the embroidery from, but it is likely that it passed through other hands before it ended up in the USA.

The Judgement of Solomon, embroidery, 17th century. 7.1972, the Gift of Mrs. William A. McDonnell. Photograph, St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri, USA.

Other pages illustrate fragments suitable for embellishing antique furniture, or for display as relics of past crafts. The ‘Fine Petit Point Chair Back’ (£4.10.0) and ‘Chair Seat’ (£4.10.0) (see below) would potentially enhance an 18th century antique chair; or the ‘Sixteenth Century Border’ (£28.0.0.) (below) would be a fine addition to an antique oak interior, so fashionable at the time.

Debenham & Freebody antiques sale catalogue, c.1915. Photograph, Antique Dealer Research Project, University of Leeds, 2025.

18th century, and even early 19th century needlework pictures (see below), also seemed to be very popular, keying into the 18th century and ‘Regency’ revivals that were generating interest in the period.

As previous blog post have indicated – see our post on a sales catalogue produced by the furniture retailer Hampton & Sons (see April 2021) and the earlier Guest Blog Post by our friend Chris Coles on antiques and department stores (see November 2014) – from the early 1900s department stores were key locations for the sales of antiques. Debenham & Freebody for example opened their department store in Wigmore Street, London in about 1909 and had an antiques department in the store right from the start. Their antiques department seemed to have been a great success and they moved the department to a dedicated and larger section in their Welbeck Street store in 1923.

Debenham & Freebody, Wigmore Street, c.1917. Photograph copyright Historic England Archive.

The rare Debenham & Freebody sales catalogue is a significant addition to the antique dealer archives, and will be joining the other antique dealer archives at the Brotherton Library Special Collections at the University of Leeds in due course.

Mark

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Tags: antique dealer catalogues, antique textiles, Brotherton Special Collections, Chris Coles, Debenham and Freebody, department store antiques departments, Hampton & Sons, St. Louis Art Museum, Willaim A. McDonnell

December 30, 2023

Part of the Furniture: The Library of John Bedford – exhibition

Exciting news for the forthcoming start of 2024 – I’ve curated a new exhibition (with Rachel Eckersley, rare book specialist at the Brotherton Library Special Collections and Rhiannon Lawrence-Francis, Special Collections Curator), which opens on 9th January 2024 at the Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery at the University of Leeds.

The exhibition, ‘Part of the Furniture: The Library of John Bedford‘, which runs until 2nd December 2024 (so plenty of time to see it) is focused on the library of furniture history, assembled by former antique dealer, John Bedford (1941-2019). John owned William Bedford Antiques in North London, and which became a Public Limited Company (PLC) in the 1980s. John spent 45 years creating a remarkable library of books and manuscripts, dating from the 17th century to the twentieth century, and the exhibition celebrates John’s extraordinary gift to the University of Leeds.

Thomas Chippendale, *The Cabinet-maker and Gentleman’s Director* (1754)

The exhibition explores the history of furniture as a subject, highlighting the role that books and publications have played in the evolving discourse, and directing attention to the influential role that antique dealers and collectors have played in the formation of furniture history. It is full of rare and wonderful books and manuscripts, from a early 18th century Apprenticeship Indenture, and a unique copy of Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau’s Furniture Designs (c.1545-1565), to key texts such as Chippendale’s Director (1754) and Sheraton and Hepplewhite pattern books.

One of the most interesting items (as far as the antique dealer’s blog is concerned at least), is a unique sketch book of designs for drapery and furniture produced by Daniel Thorn (c.1788-1853) in the early 19th century. Thorn began trading as ‘Upholsterer’ in the 1810s, but by the 1830s he was trading as a ‘curiosity dealer’ and ‘dealer in ancient furniture’. Such a transition, as readers of the antique dealers blog will know, was quite common in the early 19th century.

Sketch book of Daniel Thorn, c.1814-1820s. Photograph Brotherton Library Special Collections University of Leeds.

Thorn’s sketch book contains dozens of designs for upholstery schemes, as well as sketches for furniture designs, all in the fashionable taste of the 1810s and 1820s. But his sketch book also contains some fascinating drawings of antiques and curios, demonstrating his evolving interests as a dealer in ancient furniture and curiosities. This drawing (below) is typical of the detailed sketches in Thorn’s album – a loose page inserted into the bound volume – it shows 16th and 17th century ‘Bellarmine’ jugs, a ‘Curious Bason [sic] plate (old Earthen Ware painted Yellow & B [brown/black?] ornam[ent]’, together with 17th century glass vessels, a knife ‘very rude’ and a ‘Yellow Earth[enware] pot’

The exhibition also includes a fabulously vibrant trade catalogue produced by Henry Lawford in 1855 – The Cabinet of Practical, Useful and Decorative Furniture Designs. It folds out, rather like an old Ordnance Survey Map, and contains brightly coloured lithographed designs, mounted on a linen background, for deep-buttoned sofas in typical Victorian styles of the period. It reminds us that the Victorian interior was a riot of colour, rather than being dour, dark and drab!

Henry Lawford, *The Cabinet of Practical, Useful and Decorative Furniture Designs* (1855). Photograph Brotherton Library Special Collections University of Leeds.

The exhibition is FREE to visit – the Treasures Gallery is open Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm – and runs from 9th January until 21st December 2024. Do also keep your eyes open for events associated with the exhibition ‘Part of the Furniture: the John Bedford Library’ throughout 2024. I hope you get a chance to come and see the exhibition – do say hello!

Happy New Year to all our readers!

Mark

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Tags: Ancient Furniture Dealers, Brotherton Special Collections, Curiosity Dealers, Daniel Thorn, Exhibitions, John Bedford

February 26, 2023

Waring & Gillow Italian Antiques Exhibition 1909

A new edition to the growing collection of Antique Dealer catalogues is a rare exhibition catalogue produced by the furniture makers and retailers Waring & Gillow in 1909. This ‘Exhibition of Italian Furniture and Pictures by Italian Artists’ took place at Waring & Gillow’s shop in Oxford Street in London.

Waring & Gillow Exhibition catalogue, 1909. Photograph, Antique Dealers’ Research Project, University of Leeds.

The exhibition included a very wide range of ‘antiques’ – ‘antique furniture’, ‘Old tapestries’, ‘sculptured marbles of historic interest’, ‘Bronzes’, ‘Old Majolica ware’, ‘Lace’, XVIth century Cathedral Vestments’ and paintings by ‘Old Masters’, as well as paintings by ‘Modern Italian Artists’ such as Pio Joris (1843-1921), Silvio Galimberti (1869-1956) and Filiberto Petiti (1845-1924) – the latter loaned by Queen Margherita of Savoy (1851-1926).

The ‘Modern’ paintings in the exhibition appear to have all been loans from various private collectors, no doubt an extra inducement for potential customers to come to buy the wide range of antiques in the exhibition, all of which were for sale. There were a small number of ‘Old Master’ paintings, which also appeared to have been loans (‘The Three Graces by Sarriboursi’, ‘The Annunciation by Francesco di Gentile’ and a ‘Madonna and Child and Saints Bernardo and Girolamo by Pinturicchio’); but there were also one or two ‘Old Paintings’ on sale at the exhibition – a pair of oil paintings on panel ‘of the Pier Della Francesca School’ (priced at £75 the pair), and a ‘XVth century Madonna and Child’ on panel (priced at £95).

The range of antiques for sale illustrates the evolving fashion for Italian interior decoration promoted by Waring & Gillow at the time. The catalogue even included an illustration of an ‘Italian Salon’ as one of the frontispiece images – the tapestries in the illustration were for sale in the exhibition, described as ‘Early XVIIth century’ the 7 tapestries were offered at £3,000 the set.

The exhibition included a wide range of antique furniture, including ‘XVth, XVIth and XVIIth century’ chairs and tables, coffers and cassone; this ‘Fine Italian Renaissance Credence’ in walnut (see below) was priced at £100.

And this ‘Table of old ”Verde Antico” marble, with ”Breccia Corallina” borders, was offered at £115 (see below).

Perhaps the most surprising ‘antiques’ for sale in the exhibition was a range of ecclesiastical vestments, including this ‘Renaissance Chasuble of the Sixteenth Century’ (one of 4 offered for sale) at £39.10s (see below). Although to be fair, the tradition of buying and selling antique textiles goes back to at least the early 19th century in terms of the history of antique dealing, and museums such as the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A Museum) had been assembling collections of antique textiles since it’s earliest days in the 1850s.

That Waring & Gillow, one of the leading modern furniture retailers in the period, should be staging exhibitions of ‘antique furniture’ is of course not unusual; the firm was also buying and selling antique furniture alongside many modern furniture retailers at the time. The exhibition catalogue will be making it’s way to the collections of Antique Dealer material at the Brotherton Library Special Collections at the University of Leeds in due course.

Mark

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Tags: antique dealer catalogues, Brotherton Special Collections, Italian Antiques, Waring & Gillow

January 29, 2022

More Antique Dealer Ephemera – Mary Bellis Antiques photo albums 1940s-1950s

The collections of antique dealer ephemera and archives gathered as part of the on-going research into the history of the antique trade in Britain continues apace. The latest additions are two unique photograph albums of stock of the well-known dealer in antique oak furniture and early objects, Mary Bellis (c.1896-1897). Bellis opened her first antique shop in Bournemouth in 1943, and the photograph albums appear to date from an early period in the history of Mary Bellis Antiques.

Photograph Album (album 1), c.1940s-1950s, Mary Bellis Antiques. Image, Antique Dealers Research Project, University of Leeds, 2022.

The two albums, both comprising bound leaves of thick black card, mounted with dozens of black and white photographs of various antiques that Bellis had in stock, unfortunately have no metadata; no prices, dates, or provenance information about the objects depicted in the photographs. But all of the photos are numbered, in sequence, so I guess they would relate to a stock book (if one still exists?). The first album (above) 12 inches x 10 inches in size, has a hand-painted title ‘Antiques by Mary Bellis’, whereas the second album (slightly larger at 14 inches x 10 inches) has a cover embossed in gilt lettering, ‘Photographs Mary Bellis of Bournemouth Antiques’.

Photograph Album, (album 2) c.1940s-1950s, Mary Bellis Antiques. Image, Antique Dealers Research Project, University of Leeds, 2022.

‘Mary Bellis of Bournemouth’ continued to be a trading name of Mary Bellis Antiques for sometime after Bellis moved her business from Yelverton Road in Bournemouth to Charnham Close in Hungerford, Berkshire in 1952, so the albums could date into the 1950s. The business had an international reputation for early oak furniture and associated objects and this is reflected in the array of antiques illustrated in the photo albums. Mary, together with her husband Eric (d.1976), who was a chartered accountant and company director, amassed an important collection of early furniture and objects during the 1920s and 1930s, before Mary began trading as an antique dealer in the early 1940s. After her death in 1987, Christie’s held an auction sale of their collection (Christie’s 21 May 1987, London).

The photograph above, (from album 1) illustrates a range of antiques that Bellis sold, including non-European objects, such as what is described as ’16th cent candle’, and which appears to be from the African continent? Several of the photographs have these short descriptions, in pen, but frustratingly none have any provenance detail or information on prices at which they were bought and sold.

The page (above) indicates that Bellis also sold ceramics – the photograph shows an English 18th century salt-glaze jug (with a description, in pen, ‘Salt Glaze Jug’ and ‘(see 8)’ and which refers to a photograph of the reverse side of the jug in photograph 8 on the opposite page in the album. Also included are photographs of some of the early paintings that Bellis sold, including one, (photo no.12 bottom right) inscribed ‘Van Kessel’ in pen. Jan van Kessel (1626-1679) was a leading Flemish painter of the 17th century – if anyone recognises the painting, or the other paintings in the album, do let us know.

Album no.1 also contains some photographs of what looks like interiors of Mary Bellis’ shop? (see top two photos in the photograph above); perhaps illustrating how Bellis arranged and displayed her shop.

Album no.2 contains similar photographs, again mostly numbered in sequential order, but with emphasis on 16th and 17th century British oak furniture. This page from album no.2 (see below), shows a range of oak cupboards and an oak coffer/chest.

Album no.2 also includes dozens of photographs illustrating the wide range of trading stock; paintings, sculpture, textiles, metalwork, stained glass and ceramics – including (in the second photograph below) a collection of 18th century English pottery figures.

Given the quality of many of the antiques in the photographs, it may still be possible to see if the antique still exist in private or public collections? These examples of 16th an 17th century stained and painted glass, for example, associated with the Verney family? If anyone does know where these objects are now, we would be very interested to hear from you.

The albums are an increasingly rare survival of business ephemera associated with the British Antiques trade, and give us invaluable insights into the history of the trade. The albums will eventually make their way to join the rest of the antique dealer related material in the Brotherton Library Special Collections at the University of Leeds.

Mark

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Tags: antique dealer archives, Antique Oak Furniture, Brotherton Special Collections, Mary Bellis Antiques, van Kessel, Verney

September 11, 2019

Antique Dealer catalogues

Thanks to our friend and colleague, Chris Jussel, formerly of the antique dealers Vernay & Jussel, in the USA, our archive of historic antique dealers catalogues continues to increase. Chris very generously send us, all the way from America, a small cache of dealer catalogues from his collection. The catalogues are mostly undated, but appear to be mainly from the mid 1980s, and were produced by a number of well-known antique dealers, some of whom are no longer with us.

Amongst the catalogues are examples produced by the firm of Thorpe & Foster in c.1980-1985, who were trading in Dorking in Surrey in the 1980s; Thorpe & Foster were well-known as ‘specialists in antique walnut furniture’ and advertised extensively in the 1980s. They appear to have incorporated Hampshires of Dorking and the fine art dealership ‘Dorking Fine Arts’ in the late 1980s. Their shop in Dorking was appropriately located in an historic house – in this case a Georgian House, and such business premises had been a favourite setting for antique dealers since the early 1900s.

Thorpe & Foster catalogue, c.1985.

Some of the catalogues, probably dating from the late 1980s, appear to foreground Hampshires of Dorking as the main business, rather than Thorpe & Foster. It’s not known when the business of Thorpe & Foster was established, nor when the business joined with Hampshires of Dorking, but one of the Thorpe & Foster catalogues, evidently from the early 1980s, indicates that Thorpe & Foster were trading at 49 West Street, Dorking, and by the mid 1980s, when they had incorporated Hampshires of Dorking, the business extended from 48 to 52 West Street.

The Hampshires of Dorking catalogues suggest that the antique furniture on sale was displayed in ‘period room’ settings in the 1980s.

Hampshires of Dorking, catalogue 1980s.

Other antique dealer catalogues in the cache sent to us by Chris Jussel include examples produced by the dealer Brian Fielden, again dating from the 1980s and who was trading from New Cavendish Street, London at the time.

Brian Fielden antiques, catalogue 1980s.

And catalogues, also dating from the 1980s, from the well-known English antique furniture dealers Apter-Fredericks, who are still trading in the Fulham Road in London – Fulham Road was known by many in the antique trade as ‘the brown mile’ because the large number of antique furniture dealers that settled in Fulham Road during the 1970s and 1980s.

There are also a small selection of dated catalogues (dating from 1981, 1982 and 1983) produced by the firm of W.R. Harvey & Co (Antiques) Ltd., (then trading from Chalk Farm Road in North London; the firm is also still trading, now in Corn Street, Witney in Oxfordshire); and a 1980s catalogue produced by Edward A. Nowell Antiques, the well-known dealer in Wells in Somerset.

Edward A Nowell Antiques, catalogue, 1980s.

The antique dealer catalogues are a very valuable resource for the antique dealers research project – they illustrate the kinds of antiques that were most fashionable in the period and also indicate the changing marketing techniques and practices of the antique trade – or at least some key sectors of the antiques trade. These 1980s antique dealer catalogues are highly polished publications, produced as part of sophisticated advertising to promote the businesses.

The practice of antique dealers producing catalogues of their stock has a long history. Indeed, some of the earliest antique dealer catalogues were produced in the 1820s – the dealer Horatio Rodd, who was trading in Great Newport Street in London during the 1820s to 1840s, seems to have regularly produced printed and illustrated catalogues of his stock, two of which (dating from 1824 and 1842) survive in the National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum (shelfmark G.31.H and shelfmark II.RC.L.32) – they were both also on display at the recent SOLD! The Great British Antiques Story at the Bowes Museum.

And as previous blog posts have demonstrated, many antique dealers, both in London and in the provinces, continued to produce catalogues of their stock throughout the 19th and 20th centuries (see, for example, recent blog posts on W.F Greenwood & Sons). Some of the most well-known examples are the late 19th and early 20th century catalogues produced by the Nottingham antique dealer Samuel Richards.

Catalogue of stock produced by Samuel Richards of Nottingham, 1890s.

Richards’ catalogues were posted to collectors on a regular basis, apparently every month, from the 1880s until the start of World War I. The S. Richards’ catalogues illustrate the very wide range of antiques and curiosities that a leading dealer sold in the period, from a ‘Fine Chippendale Armchair’ and a ‘Queen Anne Dressing Mirror’ to a pair of ‘Rare Silk work Pictures’ and an ‘Early Worcester Cup and Saucer’. Examples of Richards’ catalogues survive at the National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum and in the extensive collections of antique dealer archives at the Brotherton Library Special Collections at the University of Leeds.

The latest cache of antique dealer catalogues that Chris Jussel has so generously donated to the antique dealers’ research project will provide future researchers will valuable information of the ways in which leading antiques dealers of the 1980s marketed their stock of antiques.

Mark

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Tags: antique dealer catalogues, Apter Fredericks, Brian Fielden, Brotherton Special Collections, Chris Jussel, Edward A Nowell, Hampshires of Dorking, S. Richards, Thorpe & Foster, Victoria & Albert Museum, W R Harvey & Co

February 27, 2019

Antique Dealers: Buying, Selling and Collecting at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds

The ‘Antique Dealers; Buying, Selling and Collecting’ exhibition at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds is starting to take shape – we’re just doing the final install this week, and the object loans from Temple Newsam, Leeds arrived yesterday. It’s very exciting seeing this exhibition develop – especially as I now feel like an old hand at exhibitions, having done the SOLD! exhibition at The Bowes Museum. The Leeds exhibition is on a much smaller scale – only about a dozen or so objects, but it will, I hope, be just as engaging, and I hope will also foreground the amazing antique dealer archives we have at the Brotherton Library Special Collections.

The objects from Temple Newsam are being placed back into a dialogue with the original archives from the three of the dealers that are the focus of the exhibition at Leeds – Phillips of Hitchin, Ronald A Lee and Roger Warner. Here’s the first of the Temple Newsam objects arriving at the gallery.

Antique Dealers Exhibition at Leeds University – the packing crates arrive.

The story of the exhibition is on antique dealers buying and selling antiques, and of course and perhaps inevitably, dealers as collectors of antiques – we are using Roger Warner as a key example of the dealer/collector and have been lucky to have a number of objects loans from the private collections of Roger Warner’s family, Sue, Simon and Deborah. Here are a few of those objects, just being installed into the display cases at the gallery – a 19th century mousetrap and an 18th century teacaddy from the collections at Temple Newsam, and some wonderful small objects from Rogers’ personal collection.

Roger Warner objects at the Leeds University exhibition.

We also have an early 18th century chair from Houghton Hall, Norfolk, one of a set of six chairs that Phillips of Hitchin sold to various museums in 1960 – the Temple Newsam chair retains an 18th century green velvet cover.

Phillips of Hitchin chair unpacked and ready for placing in the exhibition at Leeds University.

The install is going well, and Katie Herington (my co-curator on this exhibition) together with Fred, our amazingly helpful gallery technician, and Jill and Laura, have been busy unpacking and placing the objects in the space.

Jill and Fred unpacking objects for the Leeds University exhibition.

Katie placing the 18th century chimney board in the Leeds exhibition.

There’s still lots to do of course, and we are waiting for Eugenie from the Brotherton Library Special Collections team to come by tomorrow to begin to place the antique dealer archive material in the display cases. We have some fantastic antique dealer archives in the exhibition, including some very early stock books, dating from c.1890 from Phillips of Hitchin archives; a fascinating sales book of the 1920s of the dealer H.M. Lee, Ronald A Lee’s father; and Roger Warner’s first sales book from 1936. As well as a range of intriguing photographs of the dealers’ shops and of their stands at the world-famous Grosvenor House Antiques Fair from the 1950s and 1960s.

I hope that the ‘Antique Dealers’ exhibition at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery will prove to be a success – there’s been a lot of work by a lot of people in the Brotherton Team and the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery to make this happen.

I’ll post another blog once the exhibition install has been completed, so you can see what it looks like – it opens on MONDAY 4th March and runs until 25th May 2019 – and it’s FREE!

Mark

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Tags: Antique Dealers: buying, Brotherton Special Collections, Phillips of Hitchin, R A Lee, Roger Warner, SABG, selling and collecting, University of Leeds

November 11, 2018

New Donation to the Antique Dealer Project Research archives

The antique dealer research archives had a new addition last week, a bound copy of the very rare lithographed catalogues issued by the Nottingham antique dealer Samuel Richards in the late 1890s. The catalogues came up for auction at Mellors & Kirk in Nottingham (appropriately) last May, and Ian Wilkinson, the Rare Book Specialist at the auctioneer very kindly alerted us to the forthcoming sale. But thanks to the generosity of Simon Myers of the antique dealers R.N. Myers & Son, North Yorkshire, who also spotted the catalogue and offered to buy it and donate it to the Brotherton Library Special Collections, the catalogue is now part of the Brotherton Library Special Collections of antique dealer related archives and associated material. Simon is the 4th generation of dealers in the firm that still bears his great grandfathers’ name – the business was also, like the business of S. Richards, trading in the 1890s, so it was quite fitting that Simon donated the catalogues. Indeed, Simon has been a keen follower of the research project for a number of years, but his donation of the Richards catalogues was an exceptionally generous thing to do – he popped across to the Brotherton Library last week to hand over the catalogue, which is now available for researchers.

S. Richards, ‘Monthly Catalogue of Antiques, Curios etc for sale’ 1890-1899′. Photograph, copyright Mellors & Kirk, auctioneers, Nottingham, 2018.

The catalogues produced by Samuel Richards are exceptionally rare – the bound copies that Simon donated date from January 15th 1890 to March 15th 1899; there are a few examples (dating from 1890-1915) in the National Art Library at the V&A Museum, but there are no copies in the British Library – I know of two other copies in a private collection, but given the ephemeral nature of the catalogues (they were designed to be posted to collectors and are lithographed on very flimsy paper and can’t have been produced in any significant quantities), they must not survive in any numbers.

We are very encouraged by the support that many antique dealers have shown to the Antique Dealers Research project, and Simon’s generosity is a reflection of the wider support of the project over the past few years.

Mark

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Tags: antique dealer archives, Brotherton Special Collections, dealer catalogues, R.N. Myers & Son, S. Richards, Simon Myers

June 14, 2018

Antique Dealer Exhibitions & new material in the Phillips of Hitchin archives

As followers of the Antique Dealer blog will be aware, one aspect of the continued development of the Antique Dealer research project has been an investigation into the emergence and role of themed exhibitions staged by antique dealers over the course of the 20th century. Indeed, as a platform for dissemination of information on antiques and as a mechanism for the marketing of antiques, these exhibitions very usefully draw attention to the deep synergies between structures of knowledge and the art market. Dealers have regularly organised selling exhibitions of course – the famous ‘Summer Exhibitions’ held by the leading New Bond Street dealership Frank Partridge & Sons from the 1950s to the 1980s, were opportunities to showcase new stock and for the swish private preview parties for the exhibitions, which were significant events in the social calendar. Such exhibitions were attended by the most influential collectors, museum curators, interior decorators and antique dealers. But what is of particular interest to the research project are the more scholarly, thematic exhibitions that antique dealers have staged over the years. These exhibitions, which remain a regular part of the current practices of antique dealing at the top of the antique trade, demonstrate the discrete, focused and scholarly contributions that many antique dealers have made to the knowledge of antiques – such exhibitions have often been accompanied by museum-type catalogues composed by antique dealers who are acknowledged as leading specialists in their field.

We are very fortunate that in the recent additions to the Phillips of Hitchin archive (again very generously sent up to us in Leeds by Jerome Phillips, who found the extra material whilst tidying up some stores – thank you again Jerome!) we now have a range of material that illustrates the detailed planning and execution of a range of ground-breaking exhibitions held by Phillips of Hitchin during the 1970s and 1980s. Jerome organised these immensely influential selling exhibitions on specific furniture types – a model, unsurprisingly, that was also being adopted in public museums such as Temple Newsam in Leeds at the time (see, for example the exhibitions on ‘School Furniture’ organised by the furniture history scholar Christopher Gilbert at Temple Newsam in 1978 and a similar exhibition at Temple Newsam on ‘Common Furniture’ in 1982).

The Phillips of Hitchin exhibitions in June 1981 and June 1984 (staged to coincide with the Grosvenor House Antiques Fair held each June (except 1981) in London) are key examples of these types of antique dealer exhibitions. In 1981 the exhibition on ‘Dining Room Furniture 1730-1830’ was a scholarly project, with antique furniture placed in rooms to mirror the social use of the objects at the time they were made – rather like a ‘period room’ setting that was also so popular in museums at the time.

Phillips of Hitchin exhibition ‘Dining Room Furniture 1730-1830’ June 1981. Photograph Phillips of Hitchin archives, Brotherton Library Special Collections, University of Leeds.

Here’s another room at The Manor House, Phillips of Hitchin’s shop, with the assembly of some furniture suggestive of a more rustic dining space. The exhibition had a fully illustrated catalogue – Jerome remains a leading scholar on antique furniture and wrote many essays on the subject that appeared in publications such as Antique Collector; it’s also worth mentioning that in 1978 Jerome composed the new Introduction to the reprint of R.W. Symonds Masterpieces of English Furniture and Clocks (first published in 1940).

Phillips of Hitchin exhibition ‘Dining Room Furniture 1730-1830’ June 1981. Photograph, Phillips of Hitchin archives, Brotherton Library Special Collections, University of Leeds.

Phillips of Hitchin’s exhibitions on dining furniture might be considered as relatively conventional, and of course they were more than just museum-type scholarly projects and also offered the opportunity for potential buyers to imagine new schemes for their dining rooms. Jerome’s next exhibition, in June 1984, was of a type that was more ground-breaking, for the antique trade at least (as I mentioned, museums such as Temple Newsam were already organising exhibitions focused on specialist furniture types in the 1970s). The ‘Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850’ exhibition in 1984 involved considerable primary research and was again accompanied by a catalogue with a discursive essay on the historical development of travelling and campaigning furniture.

Phillips of Hitchin catalogue for Exhibition of Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850.

The Travelling and Campaigning Furniture exhibition was obviously more specialist in nature, as I imagine was the audience for the exhibition – specialist collectors of ‘metamorphic’ furniture and museum curators perhaps? But the exhibition itself was a considerable success, according to the detail in the Phillips of Hitchin archives on the exhibition. Indeed, reading the archive one cannot but admire the research and the time and effort that went into the planning and delivery of these exhibitions.

Phillips of Hitchin exhibition ‘Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850’ June 1984. Photograph, Phillips of Hitchin archive, Brotherton Library Special Collections, University of Leeds.

The new parts of the Phillips of Hitchin archive contains numerous photographs of the actual exhibitions, together with correspondence and supplementary detail on the planning of the exhibitions themselves – it’s a wealth of material that helps us to understand the objectives and complex nature of these scholarly and selling events.

Phillips of Hitchin exhibition ‘Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850’ June 1984. Photograph, Phillips of Hitchin archive, Brotherton Library Special Collections, University of Leeds.

One further thing, and something that also demonstrates the richness of the archives that Jerome so generously donated to Leeds University, is that Jerome also saved the object labels from the exhibition! …..and here’s just one of a number of those labels from an object from the ‘Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850’ exhibition.

Phillips of Hitchin exhibition ‘Travelling and Campaigning Furniture 1790-1850’ June 1984, object label. Phillips of Hitchin archive, Brotherton Library Special Collections, University of Leeds.

There’s more to say about the significance of these scholarly selling exhibitions organised by dealers such as Phillips of Hitchin and we are fortunate to have such archive material to help us to continue to explore and analyse the cultural history of the British antique trade.

Mark

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Tags: antique dealer archives, Brotherton Special Collections, Christopher Gilbert, Dealer Exhibitions, Frank Partridge, Jerome Phillips, Phillips of Hitchin, Temple Newsam House

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Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer 8 – Samuel Richards at Lady Lever Art Gallery

Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer 6 – Phillips of Hitchin at Temple Newsam

More Antiques in Department Stores – Debenham & Freebody

Part of the Furniture: The Library of John Bedford – exhibition

Waring & Gillow Italian Antiques Exhibition 1909

More Antique Dealer Ephemera – Mary Bellis Antiques photo albums 1940s-1950s

Antique Dealer catalogues

Antique Dealers: Buying, Selling and Collecting at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds

New Donation to the Antique Dealer Project Research archives

Antique Dealer Exhibitions & new material in the Phillips of Hitchin archives

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