It is hard to imagine a more exacting clientele than today's monied buyers of art and antiques. Collecting with a whole retinue of advisers in their wake - art consultants, decorators and conservators - they might make the odd off-the-cuff decision, see a work of art at a fair, a gallery or at an auction preview and have it sent home on approval, but chances are that someone along the line will shake their head and have it sent straight back again. As a result, a small but growing band of leading international antiques dealers are turning designer/producers, and making their clients exactly what they do want.

Take third generation Parisian antique tapestry and oriental rug dealers and restorers, Pierre and Dominique Chevalier. Frustrated by their clients' very specific demands, as was their friend and colleague, the Paris-based Iranian rug dealer and restorer, Ali Bayat, they hit upon the idea of forming a partnership to create their own collection.

"Contemporary and traditional oriental carpets no longer seem to cater for the quality and aesthetic requirements required by many western buyers," explains Dominique Chevalier.

Their idea was to create a collection of original designs reinterpreting aspects of the classical and modern repertory - anything from early Persian prototypes or 16th and 17th-century Ottoman textiles to 19th-century British Arts and Crafts carpets - that could be commissioned in the dimensions and colours required by clients, as well as to ensure a quality comparable to the productions of the glory days of Persian rug manufacture. Crucial to the project was finding weavers who were able and willing to relearn or resume traditional working practices.

Few could be in a better position to source such craftsmen than Bayat, who had learnt his trade from the inside, sitting at the loom as a boy with his mother, a master-weaver, as she taught the village girls how to knot rugs. Part of his adult life was spent as head of conservation of rugs and textiles at a Kuwaiti museum.

In July 2001, he and Dominique Chevalier packed their bags and set off for Iran - wool from the Shiraz Valley is recognised as the best in the world - travelling 2,000 miles through different regions to visit village workshops. After making their choice, Bayat taught the women how to do the traditional Persian knot - preferred for its strength and aesthetic - and helped the men reintroduce the use of dyes made out of walnut skin and pomegranate, indigo, madder, vine leaf and yoghurt and water. A trial weaving of cartoons was commissioned. Three months later the Parsua project was born.

Parsua ensures the quality of its product by overseeing the manufacture of its rugs from beginning to end, from the selection of local wool and the dying to the crucial finishing process which gives each rug its characteristic patina. While most oriental rugs are now washed in a chemical bath to give them the appearance of age, Parsua rugs are laid in the sun, dampened and left to dry to produce a natural patina. It is a long process but one essential to ensure the longevity of a rug - chemical baths both weaken and flatten the fibre. These rugs retain their sumptuous depth. Finally, each piece is numbered and branded with the initials CB (Chevalier-Bayat).

Now there are some 70 designs in the Parsua repertoire, including modern designs. It is possible to modify existing models - motifs may be added or omitted and borders changed - as well as specify colour and size. Rugs can also be purchased from stock or produced to the client's own design. It takes five months to produce a carpet of up to 12 sq m or 40 sq ft, 10 months for something up to 70 sq m or 210 sq ft. (It is worth mentioning that the Tabriz carpets, the best quality of the range, have some 300,000-350,000 knots a square metre.)

As one might expect, such luxury goods do not come cheaply, with prices ranging from around €1,000 a sq m-but, as one also might expect, interior decorators have been snapping them up. Around 100 a year are made, 80 per cent of them commissioned by interior decorators for clients in Europe, the Middle East and North and South America. In February, a second showroom will open, in London.

"It is our ambition that the rugs we are creating today become tomorrow's collectable carpets," says Chevalier.

For Axel Vervoordt, the move into contemporary design was prompted by quite different motivations. As a dealer-cum-decorator, Vervoordt has done more than anyone else to demonstrate how living with the art of the past can be chic and contemporary. At the fairs and at his family home, he exhibits his boldly eclectic blend of works of art from different periods and cultures which might embrace anything from Egyptian stone vessels or Roman sculpture to Chinese Buddha's and contemporary minimalist painting.

However, given, as he diplomatically put it, "antique furniture may lack real comfort", he began to design his own seat furniture - sofas, day beds, club chairs, plus lamps and tables. Objects, according to Vervoordt, regardless of their origin or value, must possess a timeless, universal beauty that ensures their contemporary relevance. Hence, sober, understated, and with a nod to the serpentine, scrolling line favoured by the 18th century, his "Brian" sofas, are built to traditional techniques around a beech frame in Belgian workshops, generously proportioned, gloriously deep and comfortable. ("Brian" is 375cm wide, and 130cm deep and costs €7,200, excluding fabric (22m); "Brian Junior" 275m wide and 110cm deep, €5,200, plus 16m fabric.)

In 1997, London antiques dealer Christopher Hodsell went into partnership with Lulu Lytle and opened Soane, at 50 Pimlico Road. Hodsoll, known for his taste for flamboyant, large-scale architectural pieces, had always made the occasional copy for his clients.

Soane was founded for the pair to design a whole range of furniture, lighting, door handles (no commercial manufacturer produces anything large-scale), glass and silver that would combine the quality of craftsmanship and attention to detail found in the best antiques with the flexibility of making pieces in any material, colour and size. Increasingly, however, they found their clients asking not only for adaptations but for one-off bespoke pieces.

"It was part of a gentle shift towards clients wanting more contemporary pieces," explains Lytle.

What distinguishes Soane is its commitment to the best of British craftsmanship. "There are times when it has made little sense in producing pieces in England - it is so expensive. People are always saying that I could have something made much more cheaply in Italy or the Far East, but it is the one thing that I am totally inflexible about," says Lytle.

"British craftsmanship is still the very best in the world, and working here also allows me to keep an eye on production. With more complicated one-off pieces, it is essential to keep control over the whole development of a project."

She works with craftsman all over the country, from cabinet-makers in Dorset and blacksmiths in Wales to saddlers in Suffolk and metal-workers in Sheffield. Many of these craftsmen have adapted their original skills - the saddler, for instance, is producing hand-stitched leather table tops, chairs, carpets and lamps.

Time-consuming and highly decorative traditional techniques are encouraged, such as lacquer and oyster veneers, but the company is also pushing creative boundaries by sourcing and combining unusual materials, such as stripes of wood veneers and inlaid metal.

Soane furniture is nothing if not glamorous. An early major commission was the Paris apartment of Princess Lee Radziwill; a current one is a boardroom for a world-class British manufacturer.