If you were browsing the antiques stalls in Camden Passage some 20 years ago, you may have spotted a very young Edward Bullock and Oliver Griffith. It’s among the gloriously cluttered corners of this market that the friends first grew a love of vintage design. ‘We had the advantage of growing up surrounded by it,’ says Bullock, who recalls working at Griffith’s dad’s own store back in the day.
It wasn’t until they were in their twenties, though, that the duo began buying and selling pieces themselves. ‘The first we ever sourced together was a huge mercury mirror from a ballet school in Edinburgh,’ they say. ‘We sold it quickly to an antique dealer on the Pimlico Road.’
Since that initial success, they have had many more great finds, but both men have been keen not to pigeon-hole their style. Instead, they mix 17th- and 18th-century vernacular pieces from Spain and Portugal with continental design-led items from the 1920s onwards. It wasn’t until 2020, though, that Studio125 was born.
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Based in hip De Beauvoir Crescent in east London, the gallery space is a minimalist visual treat where you are likely to find Japanese furniture (‘since the designs remain well ahead of their time despite being hundreds of years old’) and relatively undiscovered artist-made furniture of the Polish brutalist movement of the 1960 and 70s.
Bullock and Griffith’s tip for anyone wanting to search out vintage treasures for themselves is to ‘focus on quality materials and design, rather than named pieces or trends’. It’s advice they follow themselves, as this year they have begun to sell one-off furniture pieces created out of 18th-century Portuguese and Spanish timber, drawing inspiration from various antiques they have handled over the years – in particular, says Bullock ‘a set of slate tables purchased in Angers, France’.
Also used to produce bespoke designs for clients, the timber, they believe, is far superior to what you can buy today, due to ‘the density of the grain, the fact of its being processed by hand, the age-old repairs. But, most of all, because of the unique surfaces formed over centuries of wear.’
The love affair with timber will continue, but the next adventure will be metallic, as Studio125 plans to launch a collection of objects cast in metal. A magpie-like vintage lovers’ dream, no doubt. studio125.co.uk
