How I got into antiques
Rob Cain, aka The English Polisher, a second generation French polisher, antiques dealer and specialist on Channel 4’s Antiques Hunters on Tour and Quest’s Salvage Hunters: The Restorers, shares his stor y
WHAT ARE YOUR EARLIEST MEMORIES OF BEING AROUND ANTIQUES? My dad, John Cain, is a French polisher, so my formative memories include the smell and sounds of his workshop in Leeds during the 1980s. I recall various characters and jobs coming through the place, and I found it all mesmerising. By the age of 12, I was earning pocket money by helping with deliveries, and by 15, I was stripping furniture and cleaning brass handles as a Saturday job.
HOW DID YOU GET INTO FRENCH POLISHING? When I left school at 16, I went to work for my dad. He’s one of the last master craftsmen of his kind and passed down to me everything he knows about furniture and restoration – working under him felt much like completing a 30-year-long apprenticeship. My love of antiques extends to selling from my workshop in Yorkshire – I’m old school and like to see people in person. I’ll always consider myself a French polisher first, though.
WHAT IS YOUR EYE MOST DRAWN TO? I buy stock according to the themes I collect, my theory being that if I love it, someone else will, too. Growing up around antiques, I learnt not to be sentimental; however, I have a thing for wooden shoe lasts as they have such a beautiful form. I often wonder what life would have been like if I’d been a cobbler…
Old Meets New
Utilising the art of decoupage – a style of decoration dating back several centuries and across various continents – husband and wife team Brenda and Nass Nassarian, owners of Arundel Eccentrics (arundeleccentrics.com), transform items such as old chests of drawers and vintage enamel pots. They find prints in unlikely locations, such as within the pages of a French soldier’s 1915 scrapbook unearthed in a 19th-centur y marble-top chest, and source furniture in the UK and Europe. The decoupage is applied to a black base with a hint of gold, and aged and protected with varnish and antique wax to give
