HOLY OFFICE:
Before he became known for antiques, Howard Byrom was a journalist. His childhood was spent in Blackburn, his adulthood in early 2000s London. Later, he migrated to Brighton to live with his photographer wife, Sonja, and raise their two sons. The family relocated to Lancashire in 2012, substituting the Regency city by the sea for savvy house prices and sunset views. ‘I never wanted to move to Morecambe,’ Howard admits of the penny-wise shift. ‘It was reading Tom Dyckhoff’s “Let’s move to…” piece for the Guardian that planted the idea… I knew Lancaster and I knew Morecambe wasn’t far from the Lake District. I like the lakes, I like the mountains, I also like the sea. In London, you are forever surrounded by life and chaos, whereas beyond the seashore, there are no more people. You go to the prom and there it is, nature in front of you, ever changing. It’s also a cheap place to be which allowed me to switch careers.’
When you buy a five-bedroom former B&B for £95,000 that house needs to be filled. And so began Howard’s journey into the world of antiques. ‘I bought a Volvo estate in January 2011, and by that May I had stopped writing and was selling furniture instead.’ He started with mid-century pieces and moved on to industrial furniture before a big break presented itself at a solicitor’s office in Settle, where Howard shrewdly engineered the purchase of various 18th-century beauties as a job lot.
‘There was a Georgian painted-pine bookcase that was 15 foot long,’ Howard recalls of several enormous period pieces that demanded extra storage. From here, to the opposite end of the antiques chain – by way of veteran dealer Andy Gibbs – the bookcase ultimately sold to a private client for £28,000. It taught Howard a tough yet valuable lesson on the trade. ‘This piece was going into a different world from the one I knew.’ Howard smiles. ‘I’m yet to sell a £28,000 bookcase, but far more importantly I earned a decent profit and made a very good friend.’
An OG digital antiquarian, from early on Howard was using social media to woo customers, capitalising on Instagram to show off new pieces as they came through the door. ‘Lots has happened with the economy since lockdown,’ he reflects. ‘The world has changed since then. Instagram changed as well and selling online took a dip. I decided to get back on the road, see people and sell from my van again. I forgot how much fun it was.’
Today, his antiques business is going gangbusters. Howard sells direct to Pimlico Road dealers, interior designers and deep-pocketed private collectors, who name Howard as their go-to for best-of-their-kind finds. Within the headquarters of his Society Antiques and Decorative, you may sleuth a genuine Orkney chair with a wonderful woven back in untouched condition. Or a dramatic memento mori still-life painting, a 19th-century ebonised mahogany museum cabinet or a 1950s brass-and-faux-bamboo bar cart. Here, even the most jaded eye will find something intriguing and beautiful. For one-of-a-kind furniture, it offers sensory overload. Who knew a late 19th-century chapel in Morecambe would host the mother lode of Lutyens benches and chairs?
Built in 1875, this remarkable chapel originally provided sanctuary to a congregation of God-fearing and hard-working people, whose fishermen were taking their lives into their hands every day. The chapel was their insurance. More than a century later, it became disused. Now, it serves as a storage facility brimming with history and wonderful things. It may not be used as originally intended, but it still takes your breath away.
Source:interior design
