Over ten years ago years ago, I made the transition from auction house ‘expert’ to antiques dealer. And it came as a rude shock. Nothing like a healthy dose of comeuppance; deference vanished overnight.  

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Auction houses are open to the public for consultation, even the grander ones in London’s West End; or that is how it was in the early 2000s. Back then, anyone could turn up (without an appointment) and ring a buzzer on the front counter. And, as an auction specialist, you played the part. Keep ‘em waiting for ten minutes, then a star-like descent down to reception, where a forelock-tugging hopeful awaited with Tesco bag and fake Fabergé frog in ‘resin’ — a useful auction house term to describe plastic.  

In comparison, my first antiques fair was to be met with a wall of mistrust and suspicion — expensively dressed punters demanding instant eye-watering discounts, as if I had bought my stock for a pittance. Which I hadn’t. But then, perhaps, antiques dealers have had a less-than-flattering press. In Agatha Christie’s Peril at End House (1932), Jim Lazarus, a Bond Street art dealer, deliberately overvalues a second division painting to buy a rarity at considerably less than the market price. And in Roman........

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