The green furniture trade

Devoted to recycling by its very nature, the antiques world is now finding evermore innovative ways to go green, from straw-bale buildings to sea freight

- Huon Mallalieu

PERHAPS the earliest ecological green shoot in the British art business emerged tentatively in 2002, when one of Sworders’ partners, the surveyor Robert WardBooth, persuaded his colleagues that, rather than seek another industrial site for expansion, the Stansted Mountfitchet auctioneer should create an unprecedented building of its own. Five years later, the business proudly opened its new complex, with what was then the largest straw-bale building in Europe, on a four-acre slope running down to the Cambridge Road, half a mile north of the Essex village. The outsides of the compressed bales were lime-rendered and the insides lime-plastered. Rainwater was directed from the cedar-shingle roof to flush lavatories and, together with a biofuel woodchip boiler and solar panels, provided much of the hot water and the heating for the reception and offices. At night, fans blew the day’s warmth into the salerooms. At that time the energy requirements of the 12,000sq ft complex were no more than for a three-bedroom semi.

Unsurprisingly, Sworders was an early supporter of Antiques Are Green (AAG), a movement launched in 2009 to ‘promote the green credentials of antiques’. Since then, AAG’s message has been helped by the expansion of media channels and the development of online antiques marketing. Other supporters include both national and multinational dealers’ and auctioneers’ associations.