Saturday 20 / April / 2024
Meet Rosemary Whelan, an accomplished antique trader in Europe, who has introduced many of her exquisite pieces to the Omani market.
The magnificent 12-seater dining table will grab your attention when you enter this antique store. The 100-year-old English table carved in mahogany and restored to perfection, is a beauty to behold, displayed with a rare English porcelain 76-piece dinner set, including large meat platters, soup tureens, dinner plates, soup bowls and sauce bowls, also of the same age.
A large mirror, gilded in 23-carat gold, stands tall above a marble top jardinière base reflecting the vast range of beautiful antiques in the hall, including an English, giltwood convex butler’s mirror, a brass and copper samovar-tea urn, a beautiful pair of French giltwood tables and a wonderful large mahogany writing desk with a gold tooled leather top, all from the 19th century.
Welcome to the Richwood Antiques founded by Rosemary Whelan, an accomplished antique trader from Ireland.
It was in 2010 that Rosemary arrived in Muscat, having spent 25 years in the antique trade in Ireland. Launching a business in Oman was not her priority until she discovered there were no European antique retailers supplying quality original furniture in the Sultanate. “I came here to be with my husband and children. I wanted to enjoy the sun and the surroundings. But I couldn’t hold back. It sowed the seeds of setting up a business venture,” she reminisces.
An exhibition at Bait Al Zubair Museum followed in 2011. “It was an attempt to gauge the response to European antiques, and it exceeded even my wildest expectations. It gave me the confidence to launch Richwood Antiques.”
Rosemary used her vast business connections to ship the goods from different parts of Europe. Now, her store boasts of a huge collection of original 19th century antiques, with prices ranging from OMR100 to 19,000. “I used all my good offices to import my finest stock from Dublin, London and Paris. People in Oman value the quality of my pieces. It is a pleasure to interact with them,” she said.
Rosemary feels that people in Oman, like their counterparts elsewhere, aspire to own beautiful things. “My customers want to enjoy using and looking at their purchase at home and know they have made an investment. High quality and rare antiques can increase in value over time, even through recession they can hold their value.”
For a professional trader, who sold her first piece of antique furniture at the age of 18 and has been running the business for more than 25 years, it will not be tough to ensure the quality of her merchandise. “Experience taught me how to evaluate and ensure the quality of a piece. Looking at a piece of old European furniture, I can identify when it was made by the timber, the patina, the style and how it is constructed. All the factors including rarity decide the value of the item.”
Most of the furniture pieces at her store are made from mahogany, the tropical hardwood known for its strength. “You won’t get modern furniture made from real mahogany these days. The mahogany tree is now a protected species and it is a criminal offence to cut it down.”
South America was a major exporter of high quality Mahogany in the 18th and 19th century. The processing of the wood was arduous and time consuming. “Trees, often 500 hundred years old, were logged, and floated down river for many weeks, then prepped and loaded on ships which sailed for many months before being unloaded and sent to timber yards across Europe. By the time the timber was used by furniture makers it was hard and seasoned. With the scarcity of mahogany today, modern furniture makers are forced to rely on weaker, mass produced, forced grown timbers (a fast growing variety),” she says.
The enthusiasm among antique lovers in Oman has inspired her to create a website that provides detailed information about her collection. “After the Bait Al Zubair exhibition, I got plenty of queries. I realised that the best way to give people access to the store is to build a website. It is an online gallery where people can view my current stock. I will update the website whenever a new collection arrives and of course you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram too.”[email protected]
CONTACT : ROSEMARY WHELAN
+968-9591 7944
facebook.com/RichwoodAntiques
instagram.com/RichwoodAntiques/
