He may be one of Australia’s most respected collectors of 20th Century pieces with an eponymous store in Melbourne’s Cremorne, but that doesn’t stop
Geoffrey recently came up with a sideboard from the house opposite him that he sold for $4000. It’s not good luck, in his case, but rather a knowledge of his craft that spans over three decades. “For me to go into an op shop is different from someone else,” he says. “I can scan it in five minutes to see if there’s anything of worth in there. But it’s not all about money. I buy something because it’s an interesting object. It’s about love from the heart.”
Although he says he’s been a collector all his life, Geoffrey fell into his career by happenstance. After a rural upbringing,
But, even when gathering things for himself, he has certain rules. He won’t buy something unless it has a designated place. He doesn’t like pairs of things; instead, he adheres to the rule of three. “Two is not enough to understand the variety,” he says. And he doesn’t want to purchase anything with an inflated reputation. “You’ve got to be the first person to buy Featherston chairs,” he says. “If you’re going to be doing this, you can’t be following trends.” And so in his store, you might see his unlikely obsessions; right now, that’s 1880s English pieces, “mainly because it’s unfashionable and no one else is buying it.”
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