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Roger Warner, Memoirs of a Twentieth
Century Antique Dealer
Published by The Regional Furniture Society.
This publication was first appeared as the the Society's
2003 Journal. A few copies remain and are still available as back
journals . It is also available in book form at £20 per copy, Details.
Roger Warner was an antique dealer in the Oxfordshire
town of Burford for over fifty years. During this period he traveled the
United Kingdom visiting other dealers, buying stock and enjoying
infinitely more encounters with furniture, both remarkable and
unremarkable, than any curator or historian could hope to achieve in a
lifetime. Starting business in 1936, he began by specialising in things
that did not interest his fellow members of the trade. Beds, 'back
stairs' furniture and obscure medieval items caught his early attention.
Some objects were bought privately, but many of his prize finds came
from the great country house auctions that occurred with such
distressing frequency just before and after the Second World War. This
was the great heyday of twentieth century collecting, an era in which
almost every sale would turn up something of rarity and interest; items
that are now certainly absent from the market, or their kind disappeared
altogether.
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Warner's choice did not include the orthodox sort of fashionable
furniture that supplied the general market in the early twentieth
century, but he did have an eye for the decorative. With this always
in mind, he explored the rewarding boundary lands between those
categories of 'high style' and 'vernacular'. This led to an interest
in painted chairs that had been made by craftsmen in a distinctly
regional tradition, but which were sold as fancy pieces to a country
house market. It caused him to buy unusual objects such as the painted
chair board (opposite) that is almost certainly a full scale pattern
and colour guide for the chair painters or 'japanners' employed by
Gillow of Lancaster. (It is now in the collection of the Victoria and
Albert Museum). That taste, also, resulted in his acquisition of the
remarkable vernacular painted bed from Maryport, Cumberland, that is
now owned by Leeds City Council and displayed at Temple Newsam House.
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Chair japaners' guide in the form of a painted board.
The pattern corresponds exactly with a design used by Gillows of Lancaster.
18th Century.
Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum
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In turn, Roger Warner's taste influenced that of his customers. Nancy
Lancaster, Lady Colefax, John Fowler and John Cornforth were all influenced by the combination of items in the Burford shop, as much as
by the items themselves. This has had serious repercussions in the
development of interior decoration in both the UK and the US. Similarly,
the direction of significant museum collections has been changed by the
acquisition of objects from the Warner repertoire. Both the Victoria and
Albert Museum and Temple Newsam House, Leeds, have turned to Roger
Warner to buy exhibits about which scholars knew but were not able to
obtain. In this way scarce items of chimney furniture, lighting,
chair-back fire screens, incredibly rare textiles, wallpapers, and once
common things such as brass coat pins (that curators feared to be
extinct), have all been acquired for public collections.
Roger Warner charts his own discovery of the United Kingdom in this
memoir by describing his pioneer buying trips to places such as the
Welsh border country, the North West of England and then Scotland. The
accounts are of immense worth because they explain where particular
vernacular types came from. No amount of modern archaeology or field
study could match this original knowledge gained from being there in
the 1930s and 40s and seeing distinctive furniture types being bought
up in their thousands. Roger Warner's memories can be used alongside
new field study, consultation of archives and museum collections, scrutiny
of period photographs and further oral history recording to create a
more complete picture of regional traditions. The text itself does not
do this, but it provides furniture historians with the raw material
to do so, in their highly professional way.
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Many leads are here to be picked up; for instance, those
interested in twentieth- century house sales could use this personal
account as a ready starting point. Most of the century's big sales
such as Lowther Castle, Scarisbrick Hall and Mentmore Towers are mentioned,
but so are numerous other smaller ones that are not recorded on modern
computer databases and which would take a good deal of local history-library
work to uncover. Similarly, those interested in the significant (and
little-known) twentieth-century dealers and their fields of specialisation
will find that Roger Warner names all those with whom he had contact,
describes their premises and, where possible, provides photographs
of their shops. These few photographs are, by themselves, fascinating
subjects for research because some of the 'antique' articles they
show can be identified, thus being very helpful in provenance work.
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Turned and blocked chair, early 18th century, Welsh.
The back panel is carved from a single board, giving the impression
of being framed.
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The provenance of each item mentioned in Roger Warner's text has not
been traced but many pieces will be recognised by readers as coming from
particular private collections or sales, or existing in modern museum
collections. Also, there are several tantalising objects described by
the author that have not been illustrated. It is left to the readers to
find for themselves examples of an Edinburgh toddy kettle or a
Brierfield chair. And, of course, the book is not just about furniture.
It is mainly about furniture within the context of the twentieth-century
antiques trade, a field entirely worthy of study in its own right.
Scholarly disdain for the antiques business has led to a serious neglect
of its history and consequently, a dearth of books, or even information,
on the subject. Few accounts have been written by antique dealers
because it was their business to buy and sell old things, not write
about them. Roger Warner is an exception
Some will dismiss this book as mere autobiography, but
this would be a narrow stance. This is a primary text in the history
of consumption and exactly the sort of important original material which
ought to be made available to students of the subject. Factual anecdote
must now be recognised as a major source of information and inspiration
for historians; its is to be hoped that there will he much feedback
from this volume, and that it might stimulate further publication.
DAVID JONES
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