A SHORT drive along a muddy track from the Tudor village of Chilham in Kent, a
small farm lies hidden in a dip of the landscape. The imposing oast houses
where hops were once stored now harbour the secrets of another lucrative
industry — the manufacture and fabrication of mock antiques.
Inside is a now silent production line where up to 30 craftsmen once worked.
Unfinished “antiques” lie on the sawdust-covered floors alongside their
plywood templates, while laser-cut veneer and ornate brasswork lie in
packages waiting to be fixed into place.
The man who headed this highly skilled operation, Dennis Buggins, says his
production line has been churning out furniture in the style of the great
cabinet-makers for two decades. He revealed last week that his pieces of
furniture had been offered for sale as genuine items for up to £525,000 each.
Last week he identified four items recently offered for sale in London and
variously described as “Italian, early 19th century” or “George II circa
1740”. He claims these were assembled or revamped at his workshops from
materials including old wardrobes, salvaged panelling and barn planks.
“Sometimes I build from scratch or I use an original piece as a blank canvas,”
Buggins said last week. “It’s like cladding a building.”
One of Buggins’s main clients has been the prominent London dealer John Hobbs.
He strongly denies any wrongdoing or ever knowingly selling a fake.
Buggins began as an apprentice to a Canterbury cabinetmaker at 14, and has
since become a successful restorer and architectural salvage expert. His
most spectacular purchase was the remnants of the Baltic Exchange, the City
building bombed by the IRA in 1992, which he sold to two Estonian
businessmen last year for £800,000 and shipped to Tallinn for rebuilding. He
also owns the former royal box from Ascot racecourse.
For the past two decades the bulk of his income has been from his furniture
restoration business based at his farm, which neighbours the Chilham Castle
estate, home of spread-betting tycoon Stuart Wheeler.
Over the years Buggins has specialised in copying the work of the great
cabinet-makers, including Chippendale, and Russian craftsmen such as
Christian Meyer.
He now claims this work has been seriously misrepresented and described to
potential buyers as original antiques. “I would call them inventions or
fakes,” he said.
A barn on another farm five miles away was rented to store hundreds of items
of period furniture belonging to Buggins and his clients, which provided the
raw materials — or “breakers” — for the sophisticated new creations.
A legal dispute with Hobbs forced Buggins to halt work and he is in the
process of vacating the farm. Buggins claims he is owed money by Hobbs, but
has become so exasperated by the legal battle that he is now exposing what
he considers to be the misrepresentation of his work.
In a conservatory office, Buggins showed The Sunday Times pictures on a laptop
of how his work has been offered for sale by Hobbs.
- One item is described as “a walnut and parcel gilt centre table, Italian
early 19th century”. With the accompanying description, it is estimated it
could have fetched £120,000. Buggins said he made it from an Italian
wardrobe and four carved lion legs.
- Two mirrors are described as “a pair of looking glasses, George II circa
1740, in the manner of William Jones”. The estimated price for a genuine
pair is £100,000. Buggins says he made them from panels, believed to have
come from a church, with old mirrors from France. Wings were chopped off the
cherubs to make them look less religious.
- A “small mahogany breakfront library bookcase, George II circa 1745” has an
estimated price of £100,000. Buggins claims to have created it out of
a plain bookcase. He transformed it with a carved pediment, a band of
“Vitruvian scrolls”, mahogany mouldings and rosettes.
- Buggins recently “loaded up” an old desk in Russian-style fittings,
including gilded brasswork and new veneer. The desk has recently been
offered for sale for £525,000 and described in Hobbs’s promotional
literature as a “highly important mahogany desk” probably built in 1790 by
the Russian cabinet-maker Christian Meyer.
The British Antique Dealers’ Association, which estimates the annual turnover
among its dealers at £650m, says for an item to be sold as antique it should
be “in substantially the same condition as when originally made” and “not
added to or altered to any material extent”. Hobbs is now expected to face
an investigation by the association.
One aspect of the Kent operation is revealed in a fax dated December 4, 2002.
In it Hobbs states: “One important thing that I’d like to get going on are
the pair of blue painted commodes. I saw in our storeroom that I have most
of the components here. They are ‘flat pack’ so shouldn’t be a problem.”
Buggins claims the components he used included wall panelling and wood from an
old door. He used the materials to assemble the “18th century” commodes.
Hobbs denies this and says the antique commodes were genuine and had only
been stored as “flat pack”.
Hobbs said this description was quite proper. “It not infrequently happens
that genuine pieces are dismantled and stored in a way that could
lightheartedly be described as ‘flat pack’,” he said in a statement.
Among Buggins’s claimed creations were a pair of “Irish sabre leg” commodes.
Buggins said they were in fact manufactured from two old wardrobes and newly
carved legs.
The commodes were displayed for a time in the gallery of Christopher Gibbs,
the bon vivant art collector who is a friend of the Rolling Stones. He said
last week that he had looked after the commodes temporarily but had not
examined them in detail.
In an “appreciation” written by Gibbs for a Hobbs sale in New York in 2002, he
wrote that the dealer’s collection was “constantly replenished with
remarkable treasures gathered in from all over the globe”.
A fax written the following year, however, suggested Hobbs was more interested
in producing revamped furniture. He wrote to Buggins: “My buying of items
that need straightforward restoration will decrease dramatically. However,
my buying of lower-priced items that need a great deal of work will be as
strong as ever.”
Buggins claims that among Hobbs’s clients were the Getty family, the retail
billionaire Les Wexner, and the New York interior designer Tony Ingrao.
Ingrao confirmed that he had bought pieces from Hobbs, but The Sunday Times
was unable to confirm whether Wexner and the Getty family were clients.
Buggins denies he was party to any wrongdoing, insisting that he was never
involved in the sale process. He says he was “absolutely stunned” by the
descriptions of his work.
Hobbs says the Italian-style table — which he admits was a replica — was
never intended for sale. It was put on his website “by accident” and he
still owns it. He says he believed the painted mirrors were genuine and had
been restored to their original state by Buggins. He said some “later
additions” to the mirrors were removed.
Hobbs also says the George II bookcase was in bad condition which was
expensively restored. He denies it was a “radically altered piece”. Hobbs
says he bought the original Russian desk for a “six-figure” sum and it
required extensive restoration. He believes it was originally made by Meyer
and “spent a lot of time sourcing the right veneer and mounts to restore the
desk to its former glory”.
Hobbs said last week that he had never “dishonestly sold antiques” which he
knew were fakes. The Sunday Times has no evidence that Hobbs has knowingly
sold fakes, but it is claimed that he misrepresented to potential buyers
items that were fake or substantially revamped. He denies this.
He said he was aware that Buggins made replicas, but they were accurately
represented as imitations when sold.
Last week Hobbs’s lawyers offered Buggins £200,000 to settle the dispute on
the condition that he sign a two-page statement — which had not been written
by him — retracting all the allegations he had made to The Sunday Times.
Buggins refused.
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