10 minute read
Homeward bound: A Dulwich design show, property and new builds
Furnishing touches
Vintage furniture dealer Saxon Durrant’s pieces can be seen onscreen in films including the Gentlemen, Judy and Skyfall. Now you can get a piece of the action at the Dulwich Midcentury Modern show.
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BY Laura Burgoine 6 0 top vintage dealers and 28 contemporary designers are descending on Dulwich College for the next Midcentury Modern show where one of the show’s regulars, Saxon from Metro Retro, is celebrating 25 years in the business.
“The Dulwich show is a real destination event,” Saxon says. “For this show I’ve got a heap of stuff in the workshop that’s ready to be worked on, I have some aluminium pieces made by an aviation manufacturer; they’re quite rare. I have some mid-century, some English ‘30s looking pieces, a bit of Deco stuff as well –that’s having a mini revival at the moment.”
The Essex local first fell in love with antiques as a child. “My granddad had a couple of really nice bits of classic 20th century designer pieces that I’d see when I went round there on a Sunday. It fascinated me and my love of old things followed,” he said. “As soon as I could buy things I did. Then I started selling it locally in Essex.”
Following a suggestion of a fellow trader, Saxon started trading at Camden Market in the mid ‘90s while he was doing his A-levels and then at Brighton station while he was studying philosophy at university in Sussex. “I took everything I could carry as I wasn’t driving yet,” he recalls. “It was never about being an entrepreneur. It was the love of it and the joy of the chase: buying and selling and doing stuff up. I’d go to auctions and car boot sales hunting for pieces.”
What is it exactly that Saxon loves about mid
century and modern design? “It’s all about the line. The side profiles. With mid-century it’s minimal, elegant, it’s all about the shapes and that was inherited from Bauhaus, which is the biggest design movement in the history of design,” he says. “Bauhaus was so revolutionary, and mid-century was informed by that. They were so diverse in what they did. It was multi-disciplinary, not just about designing furniture but also art, typography, literature; they did the whole lot.”
The vintage dealer says he’s learned on the job, by being immersed in it and listening to people in the biz. A regular on TV’s Salvage Hunters: The Restorers, Saxon also hires out pieces as props for films, with recent appearances in Renee Zellweger’s Judy and Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. “For the Gentlemen, they needed some pieces for a garage scene. A couple of big illuminated signs, some polysteel furniture,” he says. “At the moment I’m putting together stuff for a film set in the ‘60s and ‘70s in a rundown New York.”
For Judy, Saxon arranged pieces for the MGM set, for the scenes when Judy Garland is filming the Wizard of Oz. “Like most things in film, it’s usually blink and you miss it,” Saxon laughs. “The longest that one of my pieces was
onscreen was in Skyfall when James Bond is sitting at a ‘50s steel table to take a test with a psychologist. You see the table for about 30 seconds. I sold that piece to a guy and forgot to tell him James Bond had sat at that table.”
For the past year Saxon has appeared on two seasons of Salvage Hunters: the Restorers and began filming his next season earlier this month in Wales. “Audiences loved seeing the restoration process, which is where this spin off show came from,” he says. “It’s a fantastic show to be part of.” The trade has changed in recent years. “You can buy a cigar chair in Ikea or a cocktail chair at Homebase. Modernism reached the mainstream about five years ago and it killed off the antiques trade quite badly,” Saxon says. “The market is more specialised and niche now. What’s been swept away is a buyer who would buy something original with a history; they’re now shopping online. We’ve always said antiques is the greenest, most sustainable business.”
Midcentury Modern is at Dulwich College, SE21 7LD, on Sunday 15 March from 10am-4pm. Tickets: £9 entry from 10am, 2 for £10 from 1pm, FREE from 3pm, Children under 14 free. www.modernshows.com
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