"I love the idea of pieces of furniture or paintings that are – in the case of Art Deco – nearly 100 years old being given a new lease of life," says Harry Wallop.
ATG: are you buying furniture of the age and style to match your property?
Harry Wallop: We were very keen to find as much 1930s Art Deco stuff as possible but, equally, did not want the house to become a clichéd theme park to the period, so were happy with just one good piece per room. The great thing about decent quality brown furniture, of whatever era, is that so much other stuff goes well with it, be it oil paintings, rugs, or upholstered chairs.
Harry Wallop, who searched through items at auction in order to help decorate his Art Deco holiday home in Cumbria.
Is most of the furniture you are buying second-hand/old?
From auction? Yes, it’s all second-hand. For the house? There were some new pieces, especially sofas and beds. It’s quite hard to find good-quality and comfortable sofas and beds at auction in decent condition. But the majority of the stuff is second-hand, including all the china, paintings, wardrobes, chests of drawers, bedside tables. Even some curtains were second-hand.
Do you consider the sustainable elements of buying old/second-hand too?
I love the idea of pieces of furniture or paintings that are – in the case of Art Deco – nearly 100 years old being given a new lease of life. And being used. What was the point of all that work and craftsmanship being expended if the finished product is only enjoyed for a few years? Some of these pieces were built to last, so it's great that they are still being used.
Another view of Endymion House in Cumbria.
Do you buy from both dealers/antiques shops/fairs and auctions? Online or in real life?
Mostly from auctions, both online and in person, though an increasing number are online, using thesaleroom.com an awful lot. The local auction house in the north Lake District, Mitchells in Cockermouth, is a brilliant place to find stuff. We had quite a few trawls through fairs, with Ardingly Antiques Fair being a particularly fruitful hunting ground.
Do you feel there is a trend toward buying antiques/vintage/secondhand? Do you think other younger buyers are becoming more interested?
I hope so. There have obviously been seismic shifts in the retail market towards vintage clothing, with the Depop business being sold for over £1bn last year; there’s been a move towards vinyl entirely predicated on nostalgia and a love of vintage.
Why couldn’t furniture enjoy the same headwinds? Anyone under the age of 35 has had drilled into them the mantra: ‘recycle, reduce, reuse’. Well, there isn’t anything more on-message than re-using a lovely, well-made desk or rescuing some old crockery from landfill.
The issue, of course, is that buying an antique wardrobe is not as easy as popping down the local record store or going onto Amazon to buy some vinyl.
