The Story
“There is something incredibly reassuring about antique furniture. The familiarity of love-worn pieces we’ve lived with for decades and the nostalgia we enjoy on discovering a piece that evokes memories or lives lived many years ago. They are “icons of a simpler time, statuesque and fetching they stand, a cool balm for our overburdened senses”
Good design from any era outlives the disposable pieces we are forced to replace as technology dictates. As pieces made with integrity and craftsmanship, they speak to us and their scarcity makes our homes unique.
It was in the early 1990’s when my obsession with all things French and gorgeously weathered and worn began in an article in “Red Magazine” about the dress designer Agnes B’S home in France. I still have the pages to this day along with thousands of other inspirational pictures and articles features in countless interior publications. In fact, this only served to reinforce my love of painted furniture, which started when I inherited a rather badly oil painted Queen Anne style linen cupboard from my late grandmother when I was 13.
Since then I have been inspired by many famous dealers in French and Gustavian furniture and own countless books on the subject, which served to prick my interest in Swedish antique furniture.
Taking from all this inspiration the look and feel of the furniture featuring it’s original paint finishes, I set about creating a similar, age old paint finish on my pieces of furniture.
Having now been painting furniture professionally for over 20 years, I now have amassed a wealth of experience and knowledge in the field. My main focus being in the provincial paint finishes, being of course represented by the more ordinary folk and their rustic furniture around the world.
Whatever else is going on in our lives or around us, there is comfort to take in returning home to be surrounded by the things we love. Maybe it’s because antique and vintage furniture is inherently low-tech that they appeal in an ever changing world.
At Antler & Rose you can expect to find all manner of interesting decorative French, Swedish, other European and of course English antique and vintage furniture which has either been transformed by myself to evoke an air of age old history or in many cases already exhibits a story to tell in it’s original finish”
Alex