This page About Antiques Valuations is to tell you about Malcolm Green who has been valuing and restoring antique clocks and fine antique furniture for 40 years, specialising in the 18th and 17th century periods in this time he has been restoring particularly fine clocks and antique furniture and major works of art in his restoration and valuation business of Green and Cockburn, antique restoration, in this period he has gained a wealth of experience and a wide variety of skills.
These skills include water and oil gilding, french polishing, carving and marquetry, in addition to his extensive horological knowledge. These skills enabled him to gain full BAFRA accreditation which stands for The British Antique Furniture Restorers Association where he is there only registered valuer, being a member of bafra gives him access to a wide network of other experts in the antiques spectrum .
If you have a death in the family and left to handle the estate which can be a very daunting prospect, we can help! some people will simply leave it to their solicitor to sort out the details of the estate in relation to the contents, this is not a good idea quite simply solicitors need to get the estate settled to get on with the next job, generally they don’t care too much about the contents and invariably call in a house contents clearance company rather than a professional valuer, they also might neglect to tell the person who is the executor of the estate not to sell things until the probate is settled.
These house clearance individuals generally work in a very unprofessional manner but they do clear the house, and very often they will charge you for the contents and then phone up somebody like us to have the items valued.
Before you call these people in to have the house cleared, we can advise you what to do with the contents one item such as a painting or a vase of the right sort can be worth a lot of money. many thousands of pounds in some cases ( in the eventuality of everything being worth absolutely nothing you haven’t lost anything but at least you will know).
The dish below on the left was one such example we were asked to look at a property in Cambridge where the lady had had the house clearance people being in to look at the items and was told that her contents were worthless and she would be charged for the clearance, she asked us to have a look at the items within the property there were two dishes of this type design by Charles passenger. on our advice both of these dishes sold for £7000 each at a well-established auction.
William De Morgan charger designed by Charles Passenger
Some valuers undertaking antiques valuation struggle when asked to assess a piece that is not in a “restored condition”, as it is quite difficult to judge the cost involved for restoration and to in turn take that into account.
I believe that Malcolm’s intimate knowledge of what is involved in restoring such pieces to their former glory, has given him a useful insight into the valuation process.
His work as a valuer has taken him to a wide range of locations, from finely appointed stately homes to London town houses, to burnt out carcasses of buildings with fire damaged antiques hidden a midst the rubble (an extreme case of which you can see below.
He also had the privilege to work as the resident clock expert on the BBC’s Restoration Roadshow as a valuer,restorer, presenter,and he is at present the resident clock expert on the programme, he has also acted as a consultant for other television programmes over the years
A benefit of being in this business so long, is a perspective on how much it has changed, and continues to change. The process of antiques valuation is drastically different today, to the way it was even 5 or 10 years ago.
These days, all of the valuations are undertaken using the latest technology.
A high resolution, gps enabled camera is used to log and geo tag the items, notes are taken on an android tablet, and all items are presented in an annotated Word file with hyperlinks to similar items. This allows them to create a truly comprehensive and up to date service, which means that the final valuation can be based on there long experience and knowledge across the antique spectrum but also corroborated using up to the minute auction and retail data.
Specialist Antiques Valuation and Consultation.
Malcolms clock and furniture restoration company have specialised in the restoration and valuation of fine 17th and 18th century antique Longcase clocks, furniture and works of art. Malcolm is a fully skilled horologist specialising in the restoration and valuation of 17th-century movements.
Below you can see a typical antiques valuation call for an insurance company regarding damaged antique items after a fire which apparently was caused by squirrels eating through electrical cables.
Malcolm has found it is necessary, that for the clients claim to be processed accurately and for the client to be actually paid out that the photographs taken of their items to be geo-tagged on the photographs to their location, and each individual item of merit to have a hyperlink to a similar item on the database on the Internet so the actual price can be proven.
This is necessary in the event of a claim as insurance companies have been receiving a lot of fraudulent claims and of course the floods and damage payouts of 2012-13 were excessive.
Therefore with this kind of valuation process your claim has a much better chance of being proven and this process is undertaken by us on a regular basis.
