Within your career to date, which item would you class as your favourite?
My career spans 30 years and a wide spectrum of objects so there a lot to choose from but I look back to my formative years for my favourite discoveries. My first choice is a carpet I found on a routine house clearance in about 2000. There was little left in the house except for a bedroom suite, a few pieces of broken ceramics and some books, however on the floor was a dirty carpet that was ‘going in the skip’. I have always loved Persian carpets, and this was a room size Tabriz! With a clean it revealed a lovely golden colour and a signature for the master weaver Haji Jalali. We later sold it for £8,500, but it could have ended up in the bin! My second choice is a really funky piece of furniture I found in an old chicken shed in the middle of a field about 15 years ago. It was a tall column of drawers made by the renowned modern designer John Makepeace. It stood about 5-foot 6 high and was made of plywood with a steel column in one corner that the drawers hinged around, each with a brightly coloured acrylic base. It was made in about 1970 and created enormous interest in the auction, eventually selling for £10,000. I have found and sold many more valuable items, some I knew at the time what they were and others I found out later! Experience is important and I have always believed you need to ‘know what you don’t know’ to be really good at what you do.
