Tools of the Trade
16 December 2021
From apple pickers to cucumber straighteners - the highs and lows of gardenalia.
Thomas Woodham-Smith
Thomas Woodham-Smith is an art dealer and advisor, and our Fair Director.
Nickel-plated articulated Apple Picker, French, c. 1900, overall 24cm.
Image courtesy of Old Garden Tools.
If you are an exhibitor at the Battersea Decorative Fair and you have the urge to go to the loo, you go through the storage area stacked sky high with dealers’ goods waiting to go on show. To reach the ‘Gents’ at the back your final hurdle is getting over a ramshackle and constantly tumbling regiment of beautifully waxed and polished garden spades and forks. These are the stock of Graham Child who trades as Garden Artefacts. He, like King Midas, has discovered the art of turning base metal into gold. He has found that if you hang a group of six or so nicely presented garden tools on a rack, and each crucially with the same shaped handles, interior designers and fashionable people - often with no garden - will buy the lot. Apparently many a hallway or drawing room is adorned with these garnitures of wood and steel. By the end of the fair it is quite easy to get to the loo.
Graham himself is part of the secret: he is one of those disarmingly charming silver-haired men who always carry a smile on their lips and a chuckle lurking somewhere mysterious and interior. He sacrificed his working years at the coalface of Sotheby’s furniture department and has written a few books too, but he has found his spiritual home fostering a rustic chic which defies analysis. Punter after punter appears and leaves carrying an awkward bundle. Ever since I first encountered this miracle I have been keen to explore the material behind it.
A Rack of 6 Vintage Spades and Forks, each with v shaped ash handles.
Image courtesy of Garden Artefacts.
The first port of call was to visit and chat with Graham himself. Over the summer I visited a pop-up he was undertaking in a small corner shop on Pimlico Road. Typically, I found him deep into a broadsheet newspaper sipping a cup of coffee with his glasses propped up on his forehead. He has an uncanny knack of seeming tremendously at ease wherever he is. We chatted for an hour or so, mainly reminiscing, but gradually the truth was uncovered, namely that the world of garden implements is a bit of a rabbit hole down which I should beware falling. Yes, he loves what he sells, but it is the symmetry, the surface, the style and the design elements that really drive him; he isn’t interested in the rarity or collectability of the pieces. But he directed me to a few names in the trade where dangerously deep knowledge could be acquired.
The thing about our business is that you can buy and collect anything, from the current vogue for NFTs to garden implements. I was once told that if you have one item then it is simply a purchase, two and you enter into the world of pairs and anything including and beyond could be defined as a collection. Someone who has long passed the point of three and almost seems to demand his own category is Trevor Farrell who houses over 3,000 items of gardenalia in his house. A retired vet in his 80s he has been collecting for over 40 years. He recently bought a rare border spade and he noted the tingle as the piece was placed in his tense but eager hands. As is the case with all collecting, materials, patina, quality and age are crucial considerations. For English tools, the ones that sell are nearly all made between 1900 and 1960. Anything incorporating plastic is yet to be desired. If you inhabit the collectors’ world, rarity, a signature, or fantastic condition will drive the price, aesthetics being pushed to the background. Graham sells, and can almost be credited with creating, a look. Trevor is the true passionate accumulator: he reveals with a certain melancholy that although English tools are good and solid, it was the French who excelled in ingenuity and manufacturing quality. He points out a particular patent nickel-plated articulated apple picker. I cannot disagree. In England the big makers names are all, in essence, Midlands steel folk and a signed piece is always sold for a premium. Again with melancholy he remarks that the golden age of dealing in tools is passing as supply has virtually dried up. He asks me keenly if I know of any way he can get access to tools being sold in France.
It is peculiar to consider that a trading discipline one has never appreciated has both come and almost all gone. I spoke to a few other firms and the consistent truth emerged that the glory days when greedy buyers would run to the stand or shop to buy the latest vintage implements are a thing of the past. Sadly both supply and demand are faltering. So if you feel a sudden irrepressible urge to buy a glass cucumber straightener, buy one now, as you may not find another.
Graham Child - gardenartefacts.com, Trevor Farrell - oldgardentools.co.uk, gardenandwood.co.uk, thevintagegardenstore.com
A version of this article was previously published in The Critic Magazine in November 2021.
More From the Magazine
