Finders keepers?

A salvage yard in Marrakech

Any decent guidebook will tell you not to go off with strangers into the labyrinthine souks of Marrakech, just in case you’d neglected basic parental advice, or your own instincts have utterly failed you.

So I mused, while strolling down the Rue Sidi el Yamani, an ancient, dusty pink thoroughfare lined with domestic ornaments, lanterns, rugs and cushions, leading into the heart of the medina. On the right hand of the street, I was ushered through a small arch on the right hand of the street and down a flight of steps. There, in a hidden-away courtyard, lay dismembered parts of historic buildings. Doors from Moroccan houses studded with iron with traces of yellow, blue, white and red paint. It was an architectural abattoir, or, if you like, a source of original and exquisite artefacts for inside and outside a home.

Through another door and deeper into the old building came a tremendous, 16th-century domed hall, full of fake antiques and two other tourists, caught like wasps in a jam jar by the proprietor. I ask where all the architectural fixtures and fittings come from. “From old buildings all over Morocco. They are taken down and brought here by two brothers,” he says, caressing an outrageously priced lantern, of prized workmanship. (There were a couple more across the room should a set of these rare items be desired.)

From Charles Brooking's collection: a griffin from a building in Sutton

Many seek to embellish their house with period pieces. Last year, Sotheby’s in London launched the first ever sale of fireplaces. Home is where the hearth is, after all, as Henry House, senior director in Sothebys’ furniture department, told Art Daily:

“Their ability to add drama and interest to a room has long been recognised by those of us who have spent long hours seeking out the hard-to-find examples of our choice in architectural salvage yards and the like.”

The image of senior directors clambering over salvage yards demonstrates the current interest in their sculptural quality and the demand for the best, attributed, work.

Antique taps

At face value, all this might be reasonable. Recycling is the mantra of the age. But when is architectural salvage a good thing? And when is it cultural vandalism?

Jason Felch, co-author of Chasing Aphrodite, a recently published exposé of looted antiquities in museums, argues that many stolen artefacts ultimately come from buildings:

“When you see a classical bust in a collection, its neck is usually broken off. In fact, they’re usually heads rather than busts, because they’re the most valuable and portable pieces of statues, which were carved upon, or conceived to stand within buildings. You see it all the time in south-east Asia. The great temple complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia is a giant quarry for traffickers.”

A steel and bronze fitting from a London office building, part of Brooking's collection

One man’s salvage is another man’s plunder, but gauging which is which is often impossible. The problem is a common lack of provenance. Any object for sale or display should be proven to have been circulated before the Unesco Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property of 14 November 1970, which says:

“It is incumbent upon every State to protect the cultural property existing within its territory against the dangers of theft, clandestine excavation, and illicit export.”

How does that clandestine excavation happen? “It’s a broad supply pyramid,” says Felch. “Across Europe, the poor are encouraged to dig up archaeological sites at night. They don’t know the value of what they unearth, and sell the finds on to middle-men who smuggle pieces to order. Switzerland is a safe haven, where items are conserved and sent on.”

Chimneypots at Masco salvage yard

The need to abide by the pre-1970 provenance for collectables is neatly avoided. “Traffickers have been known to stage an auction through a reputable house, in which they plant purchasers. With a sale in a major house, the piece has arrived with its own provenance – a stamp of approval – and they get it back, worth more second time around.”

He’s referring to cases like Giacomo Medici, launderer of Italian antiquities convicted in 2004 for supplying auction houses and museums with pieces of Greek, Etruscan and Roman artefacts. When his storage facility in Geneva airport was opened in 1995, thousands of ancient carvings were revealed with links to collectors and auction houses in London and New York. Though many pieces were repatriated, some are still on the open market.

Pillars at Masco

While antiquities are imported to Britain, British salvage is often exported, says Andy Triplow, manager of Masco Walcot Architectural Salvage in Bath, which reopened last month. I ask where their stock comes from, in what I feel to be a non-accusatory tone. “We don’t buy anything we’re suspicious about, and if anyone’s shifty we’ll take their vehicle registration. We abide by the Salvo code.” This is a 1995 voluntary code for members of the Salvo reclamation collective. Dealers in the UK and US are “not to buy any item if there is the slightest suspicion that it may be stolen.”

Between 2002 and 2008 the global price of lead multiplied tenfold. At Stanley Park, Blackpool on August 2 this year, three sculptures made by John Cheere for Stowe House (c1760), were sawn off at the ankles and stolen. Their value as complete works of art might have been a hundred times their value as molten lead. The theft of lead is frequently called “epidemic”, and the UK government has now set up a £5m taskforce against metal theft. Iron is a target too: 2008 saw 600 manhole covers stolen in Philadelphia. In Haiti, some vestige of a living is to be had from plucking iron from the rubble of earthquake damage. Picking over buildings, legal and illicit, is a global business.

Mouldings at Masco

The supply is very varied. Masco Walcot sells plaster capitals from the Dorchester to anyone who wants the hotel-at-home cachet. A favourite market is for old oak panels, which lend instant antiquity to American houses and club rooms, proving especially effective with a quality fireplace. You can find salvage from around the world on online auction sites, though many Asian pieces are fakes. Triplow makes the point that the world buys British: “We don’t find pieces from abroad: 99 per cent of our foreign dealing is for exported English salvage; 1 per cent would be import.” There are some surprises here. “The last job I had was in Jordan. A member of the royal family wanted 42 old radiators so we supplied and fitted them.”

Selling radiators in the desert would seem an emotional rather than practical purchase. What persuades buyers to adopt pieces of old buildings?

A restored cast iron heater from the Old Radiator Company

“Quality. Otherwise, it’s about the unusual stuff or a strong provenance. A connection with a historical person, or a famous place. I know a dealer: all his radiators came out of Versailles.”

I don’t know anyone with a similar claim. Except Charles Brooking. Since the age of 18 months he has been fascinated by architectural details, staring from his push-chair at door knockers in Cheam, Surrey, where his nanny wheeled him along streets of varied houses. His parents were at first unsympathetic to the sheds sprouting in the back garden to hold his collection of salvaged windows. His first museum opened when he reached the ripe age of 12.

Charles Brooking with a section of arts and crafts-style window dated 1899

“My parents invited their architect friends to see it, and my mother saw the value. It was a big disappointment to my father. He was an evangelical, and we had blazing rows over Sunday tea when he’d blast that ‘it’ll all be burned in the second coming so there’s no point in conservation!’,” recalls Brooking.

“I tried to trim the collection in 1973 and 1983. It was a mistake. I sold pieces that I regretted and bought them back for twice as much as I got for them.”

Brooking haunts demolition sites and recalls the provenance of every last hinge.

“Oh, 1979 was dreadful. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s house at 99 Gloucester Place was being demolished. I removed the sashes but the builders told me they might re-use them. So I took a bedroom fireplace out – it still had coal in it – and lugged it into a taxi and then home by train from Waterloo. A passenger said ‘You’re fire’s gone out, mate!’”

A 1930s suburban transom window from Brooking's collection

He returned the following week: the windows she knew had been skipped.

Eventually Brooking senior had to face the fact that their monomaniacal son was unstoppable, and set up a trust in 1985 as the collection became vast.

An English post box (c1906) from Brooking's collection

Today, Brooking has around 250,000 pieces of salvage that form the basis of a national collection of architectural detail. A lone surviving piece of Crystal Palace’s ironwork; the back door of 10 Downing Street. They’ve cost him his life’s salary plus contributions from his partner and family. Now, after more than a decade at the University of Greenwich, there’s nowhere to store it. His house in Cranleigh, Surrey, is full, its garden lined with outbuildings.

Whilst the illicit trade plunders for profit, Brooking is staring at a huge liability. His dearest wish is for his architectural details to be a national asset, to help the British understand and appreciate their homes better. And as the clock ticks, he can only hope that the situation is salvageable.

As for me, I salvaged myself from the tourist trap and bought a pair of lanterns elsewhere. No doubt they’ll be resold one day.

Jonathan Foyle is chief executive of World Monuments Fund Britain

Some of Brooking's Victorian rainwater heads