 My time spent in London, despite the fact that I visited country houses and museums on a regular basis, did not lead me to believe that I would, some day, become a dealer. By my third year at the London College of Furniture, I knew a great many people in the restoration business, many of whom worked in some capacity with the top end of the trade. Restorers in those days did not hold the trade in high esteem because, or so they believed, they knew that the trade was not revealing all that they either could or should about the furniture they were selling. The converse to this argument, however, is that the trade did not know what was being told to customers. This was also, to a degree, a class thing, something very evident to me as a foreigner who was not restricted about where I could comfortably go nor be judged by my accent. (The role of class has diminished in current day London, but it has not altogether died away--things may be less exclusive, but the concept of class still has a firm grip on UK society.) I met old restorers whose fondest memories were of getting pieces into collections of star collectors like Percival Griffiths. The joke was to show him up for not being as smart as they were. I don't know if their stories were larded just a bit or whether Grifftiths (or his adviser, R.W. Symonds) ever knew the extent of the restoration trade's resentment towards what was perceived as elitism--as if only an educated man could understand that a piece was "right" or "fake".
The fact that I was ignorant of just what I wanted to do in regards to antique furniture limited the education I could have had by going to auction sales. I did go to penny ante sales which you could find everywhere in London in those days. The number of sales taking place that included something antique was mind boggling--there must have been 3-5 per week. There might have only been four lots in a sale, but one of them might be extraordinary. I will readily admit, however, that I would not have recognized an extraordinary lot of English furniture at that time, unless it was the pair to something in the V & A or a country house that I had visited. Furthermore, this was the bonanza time for English furniture when great English furniture was still fairly affordable. My ambivalence truncated the otherwise excellent education that I received from all the contacts that I had within the antiques world. If I have any regret about my time in London, it is my lack of curiosity about the sales going on in London at Bonhams, Phillips, Sotheby's and Christie's.
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