Finders Keepers with Hilary Fisher

FINDERS KEEPERS | MASTERS & MUSES | WORLD OF CABANA

British antique dealer Hilary Fisher reflects on two deeply personal treasures that have passed through her hands: a remarkable relic carved from the Waterloo Elm and a humble 18th-century box that first sparked a lifelong love affair with history, mystery, and the poetry of objects.

BY LUCREZIA LUCAS | MASTERS & MUSES | 26 JUNE 2026

Hilary Fisher © Oliver Perrott Photography.

In the heart of Bloomsbury stands Fisher London, the antiques shop with its windows and interiors dressed in a jubilant, instantly recognizable orange. Inside lies a deliberately varied selection: English furniture and Georgian glass at its centre, ceramics, antiquities, Regency watercolors, textiles, ethnographica, treen, metalware, and all manner of finely made objects and rare finds of social and historical interest from across the globe. All unified less by category than by the eye of its founder, Hilary Fisher.   

Exuding as much warmth as the paint itself, Hilary recollects her serendipitous entry into the trade. After completing a history degree at the London School of Economics and deciding against teaching, she applied to an antique shop in Buckinghamshire, only to be turned away at first glance for being "too tall" for the shop’s low-ceilinged interior. Instead, she was redirected to a London dealer specializing in Georgian furniture. 

“I walked into his showroom in 1988 and I just knew I had found my home,” she recalls. She remained there for over 20 years, working as a researcher while developing a lasting affinity for Georgian furniture and treen, before eventually setting out on her own. 

"If anyone says they're an expert in something, it's usually a red flag for me" she laughs. Despite more than two decades as a researcher—a role grounded in the need to know—Hilary is quick to point out that collecting also depends on accepting what remains unknown. In a field that often leans toward certainty, she leaves room for ambiguity, applying knowledge and experience while recognizing that some histories are inevitably lost to time. And sometimes, “it really doesn’t matter, so long as the object is beautiful and feels right.” As tastes and scholarship change, instinct remains central: “seeing something that has this magic, and makes your heart beat faster.”

Hilary's Greatest Find: A box made from the Waterloo Elm

My Greatest Find: A box made from the Waterloo Elm

"I bought this at an Antiques Fair approximately 30 years ago. The box is made from elm wood from the tree that stood at the center of the British lines at the Battle of Waterloo, 18th June 1815. The day after the victory, the tree became prey to admirers; its leaves, branches and bark were hacked off for souvenirs. Serendipitously, the day before it was due to be felled, an English amateur scientist and Librarian in the Department of Antiquities in the British Museum, John Children, bought it from the landowner (fed up with tourists trampling over his cornfield) and had it shipped it back to England.

"John Children commissioned Thomas Chippendale Jnr to make an armchair for the Prince Regent commemorating the British triumph, and the chair remains in the Royal Collection. He also had another chair made for himself, which he gave to the Duke of Wellington. It is preserved at London's Apsley House. The remainder of the wood was dispersed to friends and family to make other pieces of furniture and ‘unspecified articles’ including a piece which was donated to the British Museum and this box.

"The original owner or maker commissioned an engraved ivory plaque to be inset into the lid commemorating the date of the Battle of Waterloo so that the historical significance of the piece would forever be honored. The Battle of Waterloo brought the Napoleonic Wars to an end, which led to ‘The Concert of Europe’. This, it might be argued, prevented widespread warfare in Europe until the outbreak of World War I almost a century later."

Hilary's keeper: An 18th Century Lidded Box

The Piece I'll Keep Forever: An 18th Century Lidded Box

"This 18th century lidded box in lignum vitae wood is engraved ‘William Wham His Box 1789’ and to the underside, ‘Jph. (Joseph) Balls Made This’. I bought it in 1989 when I first started working in the antiques business (making it exactly 200-years-old when it acquired it). It was my first antique purchase and began a lifetime love of Georgian treen.

"The box is a very rudimentary item of little intrinsic value but is elevated by the beautifully engraved scrolling and floral decoration. The personal dedication from one man to another gives it a very human dimension.

"We can only speculate as to the relationship between William Wham and Joseph Balls, the purpose of the box and reason for the gift. Was it an intimate gift at a time when homosexuality was illegal and its discovery may have held attendant risk? Were they sailors on board a ship? The engraved box is reminiscent of scrimshaw and lignum vitae was often used for nautical purposes.

"From an historical perspective, 1789 was the year the French Revolutionaries stormed the Bastille, George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States of America and it was the year of the Mutiny on the Bounty. This box represents a small piece of relatively insignificant social history at a time of great political upheaval.

"How did such an object survive for more than 200 years when the inscriptions are pertinent only to the two individuals named? The story of the box will forever remain a mystery but it is a charming and poignant object inviting endless speculation."