How to use antique furniture in a contemporary scheme

Almost every interior – particularly those in the country – can benefit from some well-chosen antiques. The interior designer Nicola Harding, whose projects are anything but trad, says, ‘I cannot imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t have some antiques. They anchor a room and add resonance.’ The dealer and decorator Robert Kime said, ‘One or two antiques take the newness out of a room.’

Old pieces bring atmosphere, interest and tell stories. But since 2000 the antiques world has suffered a dramatic downturn and for many people ‘brown furniture’ has come to be seen as old hat and stuffy. In the pages of this magazine, however, we see designers and tastemakers creating exciting, interesting rooms using plenty of antiques. These interiors may be rooted in the traditional, but they feel very much right for now.

What is changing? As the antique dealer and interior designer Max Rollitt points out, gone are the days of the checklist by which you set out to find a sideboard, a sofa table, an over-mantel mirror and so forth, all similar in quality, style and period, which is far too prescriptive to be interesting. Gone, too, is the desire for highly polished, unblemished pieces, that, in the words of another dealer, ‘have been restored to death’. ‘It is about finding things that stand on their own and don’t require the rest of the cast,’ explains antique dealer James Graham-Stewart.

The twenty-first-century approach is to mix different periods, styles, materials and even origins in a single room. ‘The enemy is bad design, not period or age,’ says Will Fisher of Hawker Antiques. Robert Kime says he has no rules and will happily place a rustic piece alongside finer antiques. ‘Each improves by sitting next to the other,’ he says of putting elegant Georgian chairs around a country dining table. While antiques should feel right for their space, Robert advises that grand pieces do not necessarily need to be put in a star position. It is too obvious. ‘The mix of qualities is what makes a room interesting.’ Nicola talks of the energy that comes from the clashing of periods and styles, ‘It is a real alchemy to do it well.’ Reassuringly for those of us who may be feeling nervous about getting it right, James echoes the words of Nancy Lancaster when he points out the need for ‘a bit of ugly’ in a room. It is fine – even good – to have something that looks a little bit off.

Designers like Ben Pentreath use a lot of antiques: ‘It is a really good way of furnishing a room, as they are well made and nicely designed for not too much money.’ He tells of a client who had an aversion to anything old. Ben eventually convinced her to buy a late-Georgian secretaire and an Empire chest of drawers for her drawing room by showing her that, for her budget, something new would have been quite ordinary-looking and was unlikely to stand the test of time. It is worth bearing in mind that every antique is a one-off and that new things of good quality can be far more expensive.