A furniture collection fit for an earl
Maintenance on an older home can be a royal pain, especially when it boasts 90 rooms dating back five centuries — just ask Charles, Earl Spencer.
For the last 12 years, Spencer, younger brother to Diana, the Princess of Wales, and heir to the ancestral home in Northamptonshire, England, has travelled the world promoting high-end reproductions of the furniture, lamps and fixtures found at Althorp House.
The Althorp Living History Collection, which now includes 650 pieces, was launched to defray the cost of upkeep for the grand home, which, according to its website, contains one of the finest private collections of art, furniture and ceramics in the world.
The business covers about 25 per cent of expenses for the home, Spencer said.
The proof that pieces in the collection work well is that the designs have survived generations, Spencer, 51, said Thursday at Jordans Furniture on Douglas Street.
“These are the pieces that survived the cull every generation and, if you look at them, there’s nothing where you think, ‘Wow, that’s jarring.’ ”
Jordans sells more of the handcrafted reproductions, made in Vietnam, than any other store in North America, said Spencer, who was looking forward to his first visit to Victoria since 2006.
“It’s a very special place,” he said of the city.
A wine and cheese event Thursday night to introduce the earl attracted about 200 guests. “People love monarchy here,” said sales associate Wayne Harbord.
This is the closest most people will get to furniture that might well be sat upon by the future king of England, given that Prince William and his family visit Althorp, although Spencer has yet to meet four-week-old Princess Charlotte, said Ken Reid, Jordans’ senior marketing manager, who spent two days with Spencer.
The collection ranges from a gleaming $805 decorative box to a polished mahogany table for 10 at $26,000, and everything in between — including a life-size bronze sculpture of a fox hound based on an 1893 piece by Adrian Jones for $5,365.
The current earl’s favourites include ornately carved hall chairs emblazoned with a large family coat of arms, made for Spencer House in London and designed without upholstery to avoid the mess muddy travellers of yore would track in, he said.
The India Silk king-size bed manages to be huge but not hulking, based on a George III piece circa 1760 and retailing for $10,235.
Every spring and fall, between 20 and 40 new pieces are introduced to the collection.
Asked if the popularity of the period drama Downton Abbey gives the public some idea of the pressures facing ancestral estates, Spencer admits he’s never watched the show, despite being friends with writer Julian Fellowes.
Spencer, who has seven children and two step-children, ages two to 24, said he has redecorated all 90 rooms in the 24 years he’s lived at Althorp, replacing a roof so large that when it was off, the house “looked like an open quarry.”
Matters have improved, however, since his grandfather had to run Althorp from 1922-75, “under the burden of a 98 per cent tax rate — luckily he lived very modestly,” he said.
Now Althorp, where Diana is buried on a private island, is open to the public 60 days a year.
“It’s the law — otherwise you have to pay inheritance tax, so you have to sell it,” Spencer said.
Victoria is the mid-point for five stops for Spencer this year, after Houston and Vancouver. In August, he heads for Atlanta, Georgia, and Richmond, Virginia. When the collection began, he once visited 25 cities in 11 days, he said. Not that it bothers him. “It’s a great privilege,” he said. “I get to see cities and towns I might not visit as a regular person.”