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I have been delighted to have been in France this month shooting a brand new television series called Vintage French Farmhouse for the BBC alongside some of my Bidding Room dealers. The premise of the show is essentially getting out to the brocantes in beautiful southern France and buying freestyle items (my own picks) and challenge items (for instance something that fits in the palm of your hand). We then return to the amazing farmhouse and clean or fix our items, photograph them in the setting of our choosing and are then challenged to sell them online within 24 hours!...

Filming of series 5 & 6 back to back in Leith theatre!

On today's episode we are talking to an antiques dealer whose talent is more than antiques.  James Gooch is a COOL HUNTER. A cool hunter is someone who identifies and sets future trends. When Toma Clark Haines, CEO of The Antiques Diva & Co and founder of Republic of Toma first met James at the Bath Decorative Antiques Show (following the Antique Young Gun Awards in London months earlier) she noticed he was a trailblazer. Click here to listen to the podcast...

I was lucky enough to be part of a new TV series, aptly named The Bidding Room, where five dealers (myself included) bid for items brought in by members of the public, after being swooned by Nigel Havers and having their item appraised by the valuer Simon. The format is very successful in France and Germany and we hope it will prove the same here. I appear in 25 of the 30 episodes, scheduled to begin Monday 8th of June, with 10 episodes saved for later this year (2020). I had a lot of fun filming the show with the...

I welcomed the popular star of Salvage Hunters on Quest TV, Drew Pritchard, to the Old Forge and a good day of filming was had with Drew taking away two Gothic design pieces, a painted pew dating to the middle of the nineteenth century and a set of library steps hailing from the same period. I was pleased to see Drew again, and have benefitted from his support and friendship for the last decade or so. The episode can be watched on the Quest catch up page here; being episode 9 of the new series.

I was honoured to speak on a panel at the LAPADA conference for 2018 at the House of Lords, London, where we discussed how dealers in differing generations dealt with various challenges from market positioning, to stock sourcing and online presence.