Toby Ziff is waiting not so patiently in his Hampstead shop, Two Poems, for his most recent acquisition to arrive from a provincial auction house in Belgium. It’s a tall, Art Deco sculpture of a naked woman by Fernand Debonnaires, whose work is exhibited in a handful of the country’s national museums — and is the 28-year-old dealer’s biggest purchase to date.
The technique dates back to jewellery making in ancient Rome and Egypt, but it was largely forgotten until the late 19th century in France, when it gained popularity in the Art Nouveau period. “It creates a nice conversation,” Sullivan says. “We all exist, not to sound like a hippie, but in the same design continuum.” The dealer is interested in decorative arts from the 1400s until today. “It’s the humanity about the decorative that is really attractive to me,” she says.