Derbyshire Makers – Heldrich
“A Lifetime of Craftsmanship: Derbyshire’s
Neil Heldreich Reflects on the Timeless Art of Antique Furniture Restoration”
After nearly 40 years in the trade as an antique furniture restorer I have seen many fashions in collecting come and go, but one thing that always remains consistent is the recognition of the skills required to create these pieces of the past, compared to the soulless modern machine made furniture of today.
Whether it be a fine mahogany or walnut piece designed and made by a well known maker, such as Thomas Chippendale, Robert Adams or Gillows of Lancaster, or a vernacular country or town piece made by a local craftsman using materials they had to hand, sometimes with their own unique style.
The finer pieces were of course functional but were mostly for aesthetic effect for the customer who could afford the latest fashion in furniture design. Where as the vernacular pieces, which sometimes tried to emulate the latest fashions, were almost always made as a functional working piece of furniture.
They were again finished with what was to hand, for example, varnishes, paints, pigments and oils. These methods also reflected how these pieces eventually aged and created their own unique patination.
The fine pieces were usually finished using materials that would enhance the full beauty of the expensive and often imported timbers from which they were constructed. I may be biased but, I think we have the most varied, beautiful and skilfully made antique furniture in the world which reflect the rich history our Island has had over the centuries.
TV programs such as salvage hunters, have begun to highlight these attributes and the appreciation of the history of such pieces , sometimes focusing on the story, originality and patination of the items and not just its monetary value.
Drew Pritchard and his dealer friend Alistair from TV’s Salvage Hunters visited me last September for a day of filming for his new series and the episode was aired this October on Quest (season 19 ep 1).
I spent a pleasant day with Drew and his team through out which we talked about and looked at various items I had for sale and some that were not. He has a genuine love and understanding of what makes a piece desirable to ether a seasoned collector or a novice buyer who just appreciates the history of an item and it was great fun to converse on this subject with a fellow antique geek.
It takes many years of working and handling such pieces to understand which materials to use and how to approach the restoration of them, with my training and experience, so far, these are the principles I strive to achieve and if possible, to preserve these precious qualities our treasured antique pieces hold.
