We regret to announce the death of Victor Chinnery, who started out as a dealer at Crowther's, and became a connoisseur, author and oak furniture expert, and founding trustee of the Merchant's House in Marlborough.
 
Thornton Kay interviewed Vic Chinnery about his early days at Crowther's of Syon Lodge which was published in SalvoNEWS in 1993.
 
Victor Chinnery's lifelong passion for old buildings and furniture started when, as a schoolboy in the 1960s, he used to take the No 267 trolley bus from Brentford, where he lived, to Isleworth Grammar School where was a pupil. The journey took him past one of the finest spreads in Greater London, Syon House, which in those days had a wonderfully run down but intact quality. Behind Robert Adam's 1763 entrance gate, the grounds were laid out as the original parkland. Sheep had grazed there for two centuries, and still did beneath the increasingly noisy flight path to Heathrow. The house itself, in a picturesque light gothic by Thomas Cundy (1828) was still the London home of the Duke of Northumberland, for whose ancestors it was originally built. Immediately behind the boundary wall, set in 18 acres of rough pasture and orchard, was Bert Crowther's premises. From the top deck of the 267 Vic used to eye the area with a fascination that beckoned. When he was old enough he started working there part time, and subsequently left school to work there full time.
 
"When I first started working there, old man Crowther had sold some of the derelict orchard to the Council for flats. The orchard area was completely overgrown, with fallen trees and brambles, under which were piles of gear. You had to hack your way through, and underneath you'd come across piles of dismantled marble chimneypieces and more. They weren't just any old chimneypieces, they were the real thing, fabulous craftsmanship, the sort that would sell for tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds now. Much of this old material wasn't rescued but was cleared by the bulldozers that went in after the land had changed hands. The Crowthers had been collecting stuff there from all over London and beyond since 1943. In the grounds they had erected Georgian panelled rooms, like site huts, which were then roofed with tarpaulins. They used to store items inside and out. I remember turning a corner of one of these structures one day and coming across maybe forty seventeenth century carved four poster beds which had been dismantled, flat-packed, and then stacked one after the other.
 
"I started to buy bits and pieces of early wood carvings which I rescued from oblivion, offering ten bob or something. I took these to Portobello Road and sold them for one or two pounds until, that is, Bert Crowther found out. He was a great man, but reluctant to sell anything to someone who might make a profit out of it at his expense. I learned a lot very quickly, not only about dealing and dealers, but more importantly about the style and quality of Elizabethan and later wood carving."
 
Victor eventually went independent. It was not that long before his talent and knowledge was called on by Sotheby's for whom he acted as a specialist consultant on Elizabethan furniture, sorting out the Victorian copies from the genuine article. He wrote 'Oak Furniture: The British Tradition' (published by Antique Collectors Club in 1979), the standard reference work on Elizabethan furniture. He was also involved in the early expansion of Stuart Interiors of Barrington Court in Somerset.
 
In the 1990s Vic Chinnery moved to Wiltshire where he continued writing, and became a founding co-trustee of the tudor painted Merchant's House in Marlborough.
 
James Rylands said he was an unassuming academic who produced the great seminal work on oak furniture and was charmingly eccentric in a gentle way. "In 1975 Vic Chinnery came to give an opinion on some pieces in my father's local church. I was there when he turned up at the house with his trousers held up by a belt of baler twine. My father opened the door and, mistaking him for a tramp, said, 'Can we get you anything?' to which he simply replied, 'I'd like a cherry brandy."
 
The funeral will be held at 2.30pm on Friday 16 December at West Wiltshire Crematorium, Trowbridge BA14 6HL.