Since 2007, when Westland London took over all seventeen galleries at St Michael's church in Shoreditch, this fine antique fireplace business has gone from strength to strength. The business has gradually developed from antiques and architectural salvage in the 1970s, to its present day fabulous display of fine antique fireplaces with a heady mix of evocative and spectacular decorative architectural antiques.
 
Having worked in the business for 14 years, Maggie Westland (former teacher, park labourer, lifeguard, law and Buddhist centre admin) took the helm last year and, together with a team of twelve, has been drawing on the combined resources of years of accumulated sales and buying knowledge, years of expertise in restoration and display, and a collection of unrestored stock that most dealers could only dream of, all of which were the legacy of the founder, the late Geoff Westland. She gives everyone credit for the company's continuing good performance.
 
Decisions can be collective. An example was the successful purchase of a massive heavily carved late nineteenth century Italian renaissance-style walnut sideboard and chimneypiece, bought at auction in Los Angeles in June. "The carving of the figures was typical nineteenth century Italian, beautiful - seemingly effortless," Anthony Bridgman, a multi-skilled restorer at Westland for seventeen years, and himself no mean carver, enthused. "We knew we had to buy both matching pieces."
 
"These kinds of things are getting rarer and only come up every now and then, but Westland has built a reputation for having them, so we make every effort to buy," Maggie Westland concurred. "We have a big stock of unrestored firegrates, but there has been a slight run on heavily carved wooden trumeaux chimneypieces recently, so we would be interested to buy a couple if any come up. That said, we are still uncovering stock in our warehouses which had been completely forgotten about."
 
Web and photo supremo, Lee Walsh, who has been with Westland for seventeen years, maintains a 10TB database of 13,000 high resolution images of stock, taken for three purposes: 50MB large format colour images for magazine adverts and printing, 10MB hi-res images for customer enquiries, and the smallest size images for the website, all taken with his trusty 31MP Hasselblad. The photos are carefully colour profiled for the common internet browsers on different platforms using a method which Lee has developed.
 
Photos are taken after a fireplace has been erected in the Westland photo studio. Lee does not use flash because it 'eats colour', and instead uses a combination of fluorescent lamps and special spots. Each fireplace is photographed with the camera in six different positions and then, again using his own method, he merges the resulting photos to produce the finished result. This way he can manage detail and colour perfectly, and customers can see any chips and scratches, in an effort to make it look right to the human eye. If asked, Westland will also add an image to a customer's setting, so they can see what an item would look like in their own home.
 
The web site has undergone changes over the years, including a change to its trade mark bright blue colour. "It was a big mistake," said Maggie Westland. "Like it or not, Westland is blue."
 
Several times a day runners appear with stock for sale, and many times a day the office is phoned with offers of items about to be removed and needing to be rescued. "We can only buy a small amount of the stuff we are offered, so we often suggest that people use a classified ad on SalvoWEB."
 
The business is thriving. Although Geoff is obviously missed, not least for his linguistic ability. "He would hear German, French, Italian - more or less any language - being spoken by visitors to the church and would stop what he was doing to have a chat with customers in their own language," said Maggie. Although the Westland team has continued Geoff's ethos and found ways to plug the gap left by his unique, somewhat mercurial, approach to business, they have not filled his linguistic boots - yet.
 
Westland has a permanent staff of twelve, five restoration workshops - two marble shops, metal, wood and polishing. Apart from being a woodwork restorer, Anthony is also a ceramicist, flat glass man and metal spinner. He is willing to turn his hand to most tasks using old books. "I prefer to learn craft skills from 1930s manuals, because they are easiest to understand," he says. "Having in-house skills means that the business has a great deal of flexibility in its customer service. We can respond to their needs quicker and the end result tends to be better and cheaper."
 
Company director for many years, Mitin Shah, said that Westland plans to evolve slowly, responding to market trends. It still makes the occasional Geoff-style mercurial buy, such as the fireplace and sideboard from Los Angeles, but mainly concentrates on the core business of fine antique fireplaces, and is in the early stages of plugging the mercurial gap.
 
Update: Westland is now based 295 Willesden Lane, London, NW2 5HY