In 1977, when Will Fisher was 11 years old, he emailed Christie’s chairman Bill Brooks asking for a job. From an early age, he would drag his parents to see English country houses, and he wanted nothing more than to work with beautiful antiques. To Fisher’s surprise, Brooks replied and invited him to lunch with the board of directors. “When I left, he said, ‘When you’re 16, if you still have this passion, write to me and I will give you a job in the summer recess,’” Fisher tells host Dennis Scully on the latest episode of The Business of Home Podcast. “And he did that. He was good to his word, and I worked there for three years in a row.”
That experience, combined with early industry mentors like Warner Dailey—as well as odd jobs, including as a forklift driver at an antiques warehouse—inspired Fisher, who eventually started his own business as a “man with a van,” traveling the world scouring for antiques, then selling them as a solo dealer. Eventually, he would bring on employees, as well as his wife, Charlotte Freemantle, to help run the business that would come to be called Jamb.
After opening his first shop in 2001, in a collective off of King’s Road in Chelsea, Fisher began manufacturing reproduction mantles and furniture pieces, selling them alongside his wide offering of antiques. By 2006, he and Freemantle had established the Jamb flagship on Pimlico Road. “I think we’re probably the only business that exists in the world to work in all these different disciplines,” he says. “It used to be quite an old-fashioned thing to have the fireplaces with the lighting, but in today’s world, no one really carried on the tradition. It does give us an extraordinary advantage that we are capable of working in so many different areas. There are so many strings to our bow, and yet it’s not loose. It’s very tight, it’s very disciplined, it’s very skill-based.”
Despite the growth in antiques platforms like 1stDibs and the rise of online auctions, Fisher prefers to keep things more old-fashioned. “I can’t understand people who buy things they haven’t seen. It’s the most dangerous thing you can do. We have a rule in our business where anything that we buy has been seen either by ourselves or by someone we trust,” he says. “All the buying and selling, all the human contact, all the reasons why we got into this business and why we love [it], they’re gone. … It probably creates vast opportunity, but it also ends the world of the sleeper. [Special items are] not going to be uncataloged, sitting in a corner [waiting to be discovered]. Nothing is a secret anymore, or very rarely.”
Crucial insight: Because a part of Jamb’s business is reproducing antique fireplaces, Fisher and his team’s design inspiration is unique. “When we set out to design things, we never, ever thought, ‘What does the world need?’ It was like, ‘What do we love? What do we think would be the most beautiful, the best thing, and what excites us? Let’s make one of those,’” he says.
Key quote: “I still think of myself as a man with a van. I’m quite a simplistic character. The buying and selling of trade, I enjoy that. I enjoy the honesty of it. I enjoy the rush of having something and then passing it on and looking for something new. It’s just never really left me.”
This episode is sponsored by Loloi and Hector Finch. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
The Thursday Show
Host Dennis Scully and BOH executive editor Fred Nicolaus discuss the biggest news in the design world, including Kelly Wearstler’s new venture, a housing check-in, and whether great rooms really need to be photogenic. Later, Cultured founder and editor in chief Sarah Harrelson joins the show to talk about her magazine’s new annual interior design issue, Cultured at Home.
This episode is sponsored by Chelsea House and Newport Brass. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
