Country Furniture Online

At least in the summer months, July and August for example, the weather can usually be relied upon to keep us calm, keep us warm, and most of all, keep us from going batty with mud an wet weather gear keeping everything nicely damp!  I love going off for a good poke around a country house – now that I have a little more time to myself, I have taken out membership of three of the major heritage charities and enjoy nothing better than planning a sorti to one or two properties wherever I happen to be in the country.  The membership is useful also when I’m travelling around and want to stop off for a nice, relaxed, quality cuppa – the car parks are always free to members and the tea shops are absolutely top notch!  This reflects the quality of the furniture inside most of them too – such history and feeling of belonging!

There’s a programme on tv that everybody seems to like – one where we see experts repairing much loved heirlooms and that aged relatives have been hanging on to for years.  I particularly like the clock repairs – the chap is a real expert and expalins very clearly what he thinks is wrong with the thing at the start of the show.  Obviously the researchers have gone through everything first with a fine tooth comb to ensure that each piece offers enough work to keep it viable for a third of a programme – the amount of film ending up on the cutting room floor must be heartbreaking!  There’s also a really fantastic ceramics expert who seems able to put back together the most incredible mish mash of chipped and broken collectables.  I remmeber also a fantastic job was carried out on a very old rocking horse – the leather expert really made an outstanding job of a seriously battered saddle – other colleagues were brought in to deal with the mane and tail.  It’s heartening to know we have real expertise in this country – a real morale booster in these very challenging times.

For some reason my brain always associates country living with large farmhouse style homes filled with luscious old wood – furniture, panelling, trees in the garden . . . . .  Having been brought up in a very english village, I used to walk past some fabulous houses and cottages just on the route out of our small modern development  up to the main road.  As a result, although I could never afford to live in a similar property, it gave me a love for visiting them by way of heritage houses that offer old furniture and furnishings.  The smell of the wood and the knowledge that even if not originally bought or made for that property, they will be of a contemporary age and well worth admiring.   Wooden furnirure needs special care to ensure its longevity.  The commercially available oil is not always needed and can sometimes do more  harm than good on a real antique.  You need to know the original finish of the piece.  Sometimes dust and dirt stock to oiled furniture and this causes more damage in a short time than centuries of careful neglect ever did.

Acquiring the art of buying the right furniture for a room is something that simply has to be gained with practice and many an error over the years.  If we have an inexhaustible pocket then the small matter of just replacing and starting again isn’t such a problem.  However, in days gone by our ancestors – well rich folks’ ancestors, spent vast sums of money on buying up whole houseloads of furniture and effects when they went on their grand tours of Europe.  They’d see something in a grand house and literally insist on buying it to bring home.  As not so much of the original is available these days, many copies have been made but they can still be a couple of hundred  years old and need just as much care and attention.  Just gently brushing dust off with a very light dry paintbrush is very effective, dust gets ingrained in the corners of leg and table stresses.  Wooden furniture, oak, walnut, rosewood etc. anything made from a tree in fact, will appreciate a very sparing application on furniture poslish or beeswax.  A gentle buff afterwards will restore the lustre of the wood.  Just once a year is generally enough for that prized table or dresser.

There’s a regular programme on the leisure and lifestyle channels – it deals with folk who tour around in  historic cars, visiting various antique outlets around the country.  They have to buy, scrounge, steal min of three articles  – can be anything but must have potentuial to turn in a profit at a geuine auction house later in the show.     Amongst the regular articles are china and prcelain, silverwares and quirky outdoor things like wagon wheels etc. The things they fall down on most often are unwise furniture purchases – things they’ve not looked into and are in bad shape.  This is sad because it puts other people off going to auction houses to look at second hand and antique pieces.  It’s often possible to pick some really lovely items at the local auction house.    But for the serious antique furniture buyer, or someone just starting out, it is best to contact a reputable dealer – yes, more expensive but they’re unlikely pass on something they don’t feel is the genuine article and they are experienced at sourcing the right age and style of piece you seek.