My Lovebirds with Shutters!

My next shipment arrives in tomorrow and on my last trip I discovered the most beautiful pair of carved Siberian window surrounds with their original paint work.

These two doves carved into the top of these represent love and were given to newly wedded couples as gifts. They look stunning as feature mirrors and I think go fabulously with our Queensland climate and abundance of fresh white space!

A little bit of background on them which I thought was just fascinating...

Pair of carved Siberian Window Surrounds. These feature 2 'lovebirds' at the top and open with shutters. These surrounds have become very fashionable in Europe, and those that don't use them as window surrounds often fit them with mirrors and use them as a feature mirror.

Featured last year in the Pushkin House London Exhibition - ‘Carved and Coloured Village Art from Tsarist Lands’ and the first of its kind to be shown in London for over 100 years, the following is one of a pair of beautiful carved Siberian Window Surrounds with their original paintwork, found on our travels. Viewed close up, the texture resulting from centuries of weather is quite incredible.

You can click here to read more!

A scrub and a polish!

This beautiful pair of genuine French Louis XVI armchairs are a perfect example of how exciting the antique world can be.

We bought this pair of French Louis XVI chairs a little while ago and they’re virtually unrecognisable as the same pair of chairs. The carving on these chairs was so clogged with dirt you could barely make out that they had been carved at all and the gilt resembled a mucky brown rather than the beautiful gold leaf you can see here. You could easily have walked straight past them and not realised that underneath the filth and the stained fabric stood these stunners!

That’s the most exciting thing about antiques – being able to pluck the gems from the rubbish and when you do it’s an enormous rush. Even for the experienced though, this is becoming more and more difficult. With antiques becoming harder to find, fakes are becoming more prevalent and as an antique buyer you really have to be careful not to be caught in the trap. These are my favourites of the moment!