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FINDERS KEEPERS | MASTERS & MUSES | WORLD OF CABANA
James Richards and Charis Tyndall, directors of London-based Charles Ede—one of the world’s leading galleries for ancient art—share with Cabana the stories behind their greatest finds and the pieces they’ll keep forever.
INTERVIEW BY SARA PIERDONÀ | MASTERS & MUSES | 28 MAY 2025
Charles Ede directors James Richards and Charis Tyndall.
When the gallery opened in 1971, Charles Ede sold a bit of everything: paintings, maps, fossils, and antiques from different eras. In the 1980s, with the founder's son at the helm, the directive became to specialize more. When Charis Tyndall took over 12 years ago, the gallery already had a solid reputation for Egyptian and Greco-Roman antiques, and this would have remained the gallery's identity had the need to expand not arisen.
“The market demand increased, but the antiquities in circulation did not. Hence, the decision to diversify, and engage James Richards, whom I had known for some time and whose taste and personal collection I valued, to introduce modern pieces,” says Charis.
“Evaluating what modern work can be placed side by side with pieces with a millennial history is above all a matter of sensitivity. Sometimes what works is just the contrast,” says Richard, “while in other cases, during the buying phase, we look for intentional parallels that emphasise the qualities of both works. After all, the qualities of a work, whether new or old, tend to be similar: expressiveness, volume and movement.”
Etruscan bronze candelabrum "with the most extraordinary patina".
Our Greatest Finds
Charis Tyndall: "A basic bronze candelabrum with the most extraordinary patina I have come across in my entire career... the surface almost looks like jade, and that is the first thing to catch the eye. But when one looks closer, soon discovers that the shape and skill with which the piece was cast are also exceptional.
"Whoever was selling it had catalogued the piece as Roman, specifically from the first or second century, but I identified it as Etruscan. The Romans had started a mass production of copies in this style, and generally on the antiquarian market it is actually these that are in circulation (the Etruscan ones being much rarer). But stylistically the Etruscan ones are more refined, with finer details, and even the patina changes slightly... enough to make the difference visible to the connoisseur. And I found evidence in the library, later confirmed by the story of its provenance, the chain of which I was able to reconstruct quite far back...the piece had passed through Sotheby's, and was previously in the highly esteemed Churchill collection, and before that in the hands of a couple of respectable collectors, one of whom had curiously registered it as Greek."
One of Richards' greatest finds: "a Man Ray of the female Parisian society figure Aïcha Goblet, which we sold to a private collector of the photographer."
James Richards: "I think the greatest find is still out there. It must be so, or at least the belief that it is, that the discoveries to be made are still boundless, serves to keep you hungry. If I force myself to look back, I have had many exciting discoveries all for different reasons. Discovering a previously undocumented John Singer Sergeant portrait, finding a faint signature and date on a Liotard drawing, a Cavaceppi marble in a small sale in the UK, a pair of Houdon busts in an American sale, to a work by the female artist Lucie Attinger now in a US museum.
"Recently it’s two photographs, a Man Ray of the female Parisian society figure Aïcha Goblet, which we sold to a private collector of the photographer, and a self- portrait by Edouard Boubat, that was purchased by a Photographic Foundation and is a very delicate and beautiful example of introspective photography."
Charles Ede for TEFAF NY, 2025.
The Pieces we'll keep forever
Charis Tyndall: "I’m a deeply sentimental person (as I think anyone who spends their life studying the past tends to be), and so the one piece I will never give away is the first antiquity I was given – for my twenty-first birthday. It’s a bronze statuette of Concordia from the 2nd century A.D. It’s not the finest antiquity (of course), but there are many elements that make it special: it was bought by my parents from Charles Ede gallery, which makes it feel like a symbolic, almost fated piece.
"It was also the first object that made me feel, in a positive sense, the ‘responsibility’ of ownership. There aren’t many statuettes of the goddess Concordia in circulation, and I didn’t trust myself to keep it during my early student years, fearing some domestic accident. But as soon as I moved into my first ‘adult’ home, the figurine followed me."
Richards: "I think that ‘Luc’, one of Boutet de Monvel's characters, will be quite painful to sell."
James Richards: "Well before I joined forces with Charis most of the works I had in stock lived at home and decorated my walls. It turned out the ones I had tried least hard to sell were the ones I loved the most!
"As soon as I joined Charles Ede, those works became galleries stock and we sold a large number of them last year at Frieze Masters where we launched our new iteration. Now I need to find more both for the gallery and home! I feel it’s important the collections evolve and change with time. We don’t stay still why should our collections?
"That said, and to answer your question, I think that ‘Luc’, one of Boutet de Monvel's characters, will be quite painful to sell. I was lucky enough to buy a good collection of this artist, and I sold a lot of what I had, but my favorite remains."
ANCIENT ROMAN GLASS: Charles Ede x Shane Connolly
A rare and romantic encounter between antiquity and nature, Charles Ede gallery presents a Spring selling exhibition of ancient Roman glass—over 60 hand-blown vessels from the 1st–4th centuries—curated and arranged with seasonal flowers by acclaimed floral designer, Shane Connolly. The first show of its kind in over 40 years, it reimagines these timeless artefacts as living objects, connecting the past with the today's present.
May 29, 2025 - June 6, 2025
Charles Ede Antiquities Gallery
LONDON, UK
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