A c.1860 Anglo-Chinese bookcase, “a great example of burr wood in furniture”, says dealer Tarquin Bilgen. He adds: “This piece is constructed from amboyna, a very expensive exotic wood that was fashionable in the Victorian era and widely used in campaign furniture.” It is priced at £12,500.
Belgravia furniture dealer Tarquin Bilgen, in Ebury Street, says: “I have indeed noticed a trend for burr. These kinds of burr timbers have consistently come in and out of fashion including during the Art Deco movement and the Hollywood Regency furniture of the 1970s, and yet again now.
“I think people are attracted to points of difference and these highly figured woods provide that in abundance. The knotted grain produces a kind of texture to a flat surface that interior designers can’t get enough of. In fact, we have just started producing some occasional tables in burr European Fir, perhaps having been influenced by this trend.”
David Harvey of WH Harvey, a specialist in 17th, 18th and early 19th-century antiques in Witney, Oxfordshire, concurs: “There seems to be an increasing appreciation of both burr walnut and highly figured walnut furniture of the early 18th century. Since these were the veneers that were in greatest demand and shortest supply, they were more expensive and indicates the finer quality of these pieces as against plainer varieties of walnut.”
