About us
Our Bristol workshop & showrooms have been restoring
& supplying furniture now for over twenty years. Two
of the team live in Brittany & have spent a large part
of their lifetime studying & tracking down desirable
pieces. From our rather curatorial view this means we know
the exact provenance, age & history of everything we
offer. For our clients’ perspective, they can obtain
professionally restored functional furniture without paying
for unnecessary middlemen.
Furniture can be seen as dividing into two categories.
Furniture of an époque (Louis XV, Louis Philippe
etc) varies little with region but corresponds to the national
fashion of the period. Such pieces were typically for the
wealthy elite. Regional furniture has a style, timber &
decoration unique to an area. Most apparent in Brittany
& Normandy, insularity leads to almost every town having
its own forms. In Brittany in particular, pieces are often
charmingly naive & fulfill the demand for pre-industrial
furniture. The history and significance of decorative motifs
places a piece in its social context & makes it somehow
more immediate & special.
Bizarrely, most one or two hundred-year-old pieces are
cheaper than their reproductions. The prices of our furniture
compares favorably with department store wares or contemporary
equivalent. The aim is functional & affordable. It just
happens to come with a unique history & pedigree. We
hold roomfuls of restored items and dozens of pieces in
progress in Bristol. In France we typically have even more.
We can usually ship a requested item straight from stock
if you can describe it. This website is intended as a simple
guide to French furniture and the range we typically hold
in stock.
Ordering
We're fairly primitive: we accept cheques or cash, but
don't take credit cards.
The items of furniture on these pages are one-off items.
We try to update this site within 24 hours of selling a
piece, but sometimes one will be displayed for a short while
after it has been sold. Please contact
us to check availability.
We can deliver items for a modest fee; within the UK for
example, delivery of a big piece would typically cost £50-£100.
We can also ship worldwide.
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