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RESTORATION THEATRE
Since its royal warrant from Queen Victoria, Hatfields has been a name associated with highly skilled craftsmanship. Housed in spacious 18th - century premises in south London, its still a company of fine players, each with a well - rehearsed role - from gilding and lacquering to marquetry and metalwork.
ON A SUMMERS DAYinthe basement of 49 Clapham High Street it is cool and slightly damp, and Anna Cardinale, managing director of Hatfields Restoration, keeps her coat on. Human comfort is not at a premium here. Instead, in a warren of rooms, vaults and passages, drawers brim - full of thin sheets of veneer, mahogany table leaves stacked ten deep and gilded 18th - century sofas enjoy optimal storage conditions.
Founded in 1834 by John Ayres Hatfield, a chaser and caster of high - quality bronzes and ormolu, the firm flourished, gaining a royal warrant from Queen Victoria and contracts with the Louvre and the Wallace Collection. Then in 2007 Hatfields merged with the restoration company founded by the art and antique dealer Mallett, and moved into this flat - fronted, many - windowed stock - brick house, offering space for workshops, storage and a rather Dickensian front office. Here Hatfields continues to provide a one stop, second - to - none service for private clients and the high end of the antique trade. Six or seven permanent employees work to Richard Lloyd, their workshop manager, while Anna manages logistics and balancing thebooks; Charlie Hall runs sales and fairs. Antique light fittings are rewired, collapsed sofas are rebuilt and losses to delicate painted surfaces, gesso, veneers, gilding and even antique glass can be made good. And when a stray caller rings the bell and produces the broken chair they inherited from their grandfather, we give them advice or an estimate, or send them on to all the people who still do caning or rush seating, Anna explains.
Their graciously shabby premises at number 49 was first a house, then a school, and by the mid - 19th century a home for destitute boys, eventually under the jurisdiction of the philanthropist Dr Barnado. When the boys were moved to boskier surroundings it served as a spice store, a printing works and then more incongruously as a location for photographic shoots, with footballers wife Coleen Rooney posing for Vogue against its picturesque crumbling plaster. A hundred years ago the Clapham Boys two pipe bands practised at either end of the houses spinal corridor, making a cacophony. Now the air is loud with the rasp of woodworking tools and thick with sweet - scented sawdust. In one half of the large rear workshop Gary is vigorously applying French polish; in the other, Steve, who restored the 1726 Badminton Cabinet, is laying fine - quality Cuban mahogany veneer on the new leaf for a Georgian dining table. An 18th - century Indian ivory - mounted chair from one of the Rothschilds houses awaits expert attention, and an ebonised Louis XVI cabinet with ormolu mounts, once the acme of taste in some high - ceilinged Park Lane drawing room, is being painstakingly prepared for a new life in Texas, where heat and air conditioning may take a toll.
Kenneth Wake works upstairs, in a small, bright, immaculately tidy room, with the certificate awarded to him by Mallett in 1964 still hanging on the wall. He had arrived as a schoolboy to help his father, a French polisher there, but, as he explains, There was a Japanese chap who worked at the top of the building, and he said, "Come and touch in a few bits and pieces," which I did. When Anna introduces him as one of the worlds finest restorers of lacquer and painted surfaces, he avers modesdy: 4I got interested in it, and stayed ever since. Half a century later his skills and experience are unsurpassed, and Anna wonders how they will be able to teach the next generation at Hatfields, so that knowledge and expertise can continue to evolve. While a few members of her workforce are graduates from training courses in furniture restoration, the majority, like Ken, learned their craft from the age of 16 as old - fashioned apprentices.
Skills are not the only things in diminishing supply: tortoise - shell, period metalwork, antique glass and certain veneers and woods can be almost impossible to source. Back down in the basement an entire wall is piled with boxes of unique antique metal - work, a library of locks, drawer handles, chandelier roses and escutcheons, waiting to be copied or recast. Old wine vaults house sheets of smoky mercury - glazed looking glass with scallop - cut edges, their frames long gone to dust and woodworm. Anna is constandy on the look - out for such things, replenishing her wood stores at auction and on Ebay, or stocktaking drawers and drawers full of every conceivable size of nail and screw; this is the quotidian side of her work. But everybody here takes intense pride in what they do. Sometimes, its very very exciting if you find a signature on a piece of furniture that nobody has seen before, or if its by a maker that nobody has identified, Anna says. I would miss all this - seeing beautiful things - if I worked for Microsoft. I would certainly have withdrawal symptoms if I didnt see mahogany and gilding every day.
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The interior