Stewart Dalby SpendingIt
Buying antique furniture is a good investment, according to figures in British Antique Furniture: Price Guide and Reasons For Value, an annual report published by the Antique Collectors Club (ACC).
This claims that antique furniture prices rose by 5% in 1998, out-performing a FTSE index of 500 shares and house prices in the south-east (excluding London). The guide is based on a basket of typical English pieces from all the major periods on furniture sales in shops, auctions and antiques fairs.
Since the ACC index was started in 1969 with a base of 100, it has risen almost constantly, with just a blip in the recession years of 1991 to 1993 to reach 2 834 last year, its highest level ever.
Do people actually amass furniture with an eye to what it will be worth in a few years’ time? It seems unlikely. Where would you put it all?
Susan Ryall of the ACC says: “It is not quite like that. People do not buy furniture purely as an investment. But given the great cost of furnishing a home, people do buy a piece that they really like which they can enjoy during their lifetime and then pass on or sell knowing it would have significantly increased in value.”
Antique furniture collected in England starts with pieces from Elizabethan times and goes on through the 17th century. These were usually heavy oak pieces, beds, tables, forms (stools) and chests. They were usually put together by the estate carpenter. There were no well-known designers.
Then came the so-called golden age of English furniture. In the late 17th century, German and Dutch designers began to come to London and make pieces to people’s requirements. The first really well-known designer was William Kent, whose furniture started appearing in 1710. Walnut, then mahogany and later rosewood and satinwood replaced oak and yew, and designs became lighter and more refined.
Thomas Chippendale followed Kent and then came Robert Adam, George Hepplewhite and Sheraton, who lightened furniture even further with inlays and filigrees.
These were followed by Regency designers such as George Bullock. With the Victorians furniture became heavy again, and was mass- produced.
Within the ACC index there are some interesting variations. Last year the star performer was the oak furniture index, which rose by 9%. The early golden age pieces rose by just 2%, while the Regency items went up by 5% to 8%, and Victorian balloon-backed chairs also went up by only 2% during the year.
Robert Wotherspoon, the furniture expert at Bonham’s auction house which has auctions every two weeks at its Chelsea premises, broadly agrees with these findings. “Oak pieces have suddenly become fashionable. They used to be cheap, but in the past five years they have risen by 50%. The pieces have to be dark and authentic. Restoration can greatly reduce value and reproductions can fetch little. Depending almost entirely on condition, genuine pieces can realise between 400 and 10 000.”
With the golden age pieces by Kent and Chippendale the near-static prices are in part due to the fact that fewer and fewer real gems are coming on to the market. When a very rare piece appears through a country house sale it can fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds.