Christopher Rowell was Furniture Curator of the National Trust (2002-21) and previously a Regional Curator, latterly responsible for a group of houses in the South-East, including Petworth, Uppark and Ham.  His research continues to be largely based on the history of National Trust collections.  He was a member of the UK Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art (RCEWA: 2015-23).  His publications focus upon furniture, the display and collecting of art, and historic interiors. Christopher served as the Society's Chairman from 2013 to 2025. 

Sir Jonathan Marsden held several curatorial rôles with the National Trust before joining the Royal Collection in 1996 as Deputy Surveyor of The Queen's Works of Art—succeeding Sir Hugh Roberts as Surveyor and Director of the Royal Collection in 2010. As Director, Marsden also chaired the Royal Collection Management Committee. He retired from the Household in December 2017. He is, or has been, a trustee of a number of bodies connected with the heritage and the fine and decorative arts including the Art Fund, the City & Guilds of London Art School, the Georgian Group, Historic Royal Palaces, the Royal Yacht Britannia Trust and the Household Cavalry Museum Trust. He is a trustee of English Heritage and a commissioner of Historic England. Closer to home, Marsden served as the Society’s honorary editorial secretary from 2005 to 2011, editing six volumes of Furniture History. He has published and lectured widely on sculpture and the decorative arts and is the author of the forthcoming authoritative catalogue of European Sculpture in the Royal Collection.

Martin Williams trained as an accountant. For 20 years from 1976, he was chief executive of the Musicians Benevolent Fund—the largest UK charity looking after musicians and their dependents. From 1995-2011, he was company secretary of four charities associated with the HRH The Prince of Wales and carried out free-lance projects for a wide range of organisations including the Royal College of Music and Imperial College. He has been a non-executive director of Marlin Chemicals Group for over 30 years, and until 2020 was the non-executive chairman of the Edition Peters Group - international music publishers based in Leipzig. Until 2021, he administered the Ouseley Church Music Trust.  Martin has been a trustee of a number of national charities including the Royal Albert Hall, the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Kathleen Ferrier Scholarship Fund. His interests include music and architecture; and together with his late wife, Gillian Darby, he restored an early 18th century folly made to a design by John Vanbrugh.

Thomas Williams is International Head of English Furniture & Clocks at Christie, Manson and Woods.  Before embarking on a career in the art world, Thomas trained as a solicitor with the firm Withers LLP.  He joined Sotheby's furniture department as a cataloguer in 2013, eventually rising to the position of Director.  During this period, he was involved with many of the department's most successful auction sales.  He started at Christie's in 2024 assuming overall responsibility for English Furniture and Clocks.  Thomas is an active member of the Society and has been a member of the Grants Committee since 2023. 

Megan Aldrich is an independent historian of architecture and design, including gardens, furniture and interiors.  Her past work has focused particularly on historicism and the Gothic Revival during the period 1750-1850.  She began her carerr at the Victoria and Albert Museum, is the former Academy Director of Sotheby's Institute of Art in London, and edited Furniture History from 2001 to 2005.  She lectures and published widely, and in 2019 will offer courses at Oxford and Reading Universities.  Recent publications include a study of medievalism in the landscape gardens at Stowe for an exhibition at Wörlitz in Saxony in 2015, a study of Capability Brown as an architect at Burghley House for the ICOMOS conference in Bath to commemorate the tercentenary of Brown's birth (Garden History 2016), an an article on 'Thomas Rickman and the Victorians' in a volume of the same name, co-edited with Alexandrina Buchanan as part of a research project on the architect and antiquary Thomas Rickman (1776-1841), (Victorian Society Studies in Architecture and Design, forthcoming).

David Oakey is the curator of a private art collection following a seven-year stint in the Decorative Arts Section of the Royal Collection Trust, and as Director of Research for a leading furniture dealer.  He spent some ten years on the Society's Events Committee, the last four as its co-Chair.  He has published and lectured widely in the fields of 18th and 19th century European decorative arts and architecture, and is currently undertaking a part-time PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art.  In 2021, he was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Charlie Thomas is the UK Group Director for Private & Iconic Collections, Furniture, Works of Art and Carpets at Bonhams, where he started work in 2002.  His areas of expertise include 18th and 19th century English and Continental furniture, with a special interest in 18th century vernacular furniture.  

Rebecca Tilles is Senior Project Manager of Exhibitions at L'École School of Jewelry Arts in Paris.  From 2008-2014, Dr Tilles worked as a research fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and from 2018-2022, she was curator of 18th century Western European Art at the Hillwood Museum in Washington, DC, where she mounted three exhibitions and led a scientific examination of its two Riesener commodes.  Dr Tilles completed her PhD in Art History from the University of Sussex in 2019 where her dissertation was entitled George and Florence Blumenthal: A Collecting Partnership in the Gilded Age, 1858-1941.

She also holds a degree in French and French Cultural Studies from Wellesley College, an MA in European Decorative Arts from The Bard Graduate Center in New York, and studed at the École de Louvre, Paris. 

She was a contributor to The Houses and Collections of Marjorie Merriweather Post: The Joy of It (Rizzoli, 2022), as well as to two publications The Museum and the Art Market (Bloomsbury's 'Contextualising Art Market' series) and The Wonder of Wood: Decorative Inlay and Marquetry in Europe and America, 1600-1900 (Winterthur).  She is currently working on a publication on the collectors, George and Florence Blumenthal, for Bloomsbury.  Rebecca has lectured for a wide range of universities, museums and societies.  

Adriana Turpin studied History at Oxford and then History of Art at the Courtauld Institute. She teaches the history of collecting, English furniture and is the Academic Director of the Erasmus Mundus MA Managing Art and Cultural Heritage in Globalised Markets for the Institut d’Études Supèrieures des Arts in Paris. She is the FHS Project Manager for the British and Irish Furniture Makers Online database, Chairman of the Grants Committee and from 2024 a member of FHS Council. She is a founder member of the Seminar on Display and Collecting at the Institute of Historical Research, and is the co-editor of their publications; she is also the Chairman of the Society for the History of Collecting. Adriana is also on the Editorial board of the Brill publication series on art markets and collecting and the Journal of the History of Collections. Adriana has written on a variety of topics related to collecting and to the history of furniture. Her interests lie in seventeenth-century English furniture and collecting of furniture in the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries.

Dr Lim is a distinguished art historian, curator and lecturer, with broad research interests spanning the fine and decorative arts in Britain from the 17th to 20th centuries. She combines her roles as Curator of the Faringdon Collection at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, and Departmental Tutor at the University of Oxford Lifelong Learning with freelance lecturing, curating and research. Dr Lim joined the Society’s Events Committee in 2022, and has served as its co-chair since January 2025.

Iain developed a passion for collecting Cape Dutch furniture, whilst reading Biochemistry and Horticulture in Natal before gaining a doctorate from Universiteit Stellenbosch. He subsequently read Theology at Stellenbosch Seminary before moving to Taiwan to take up a professorship where for eight years, he developed an ongoing passion in the study and collection of Chinese Ethnic Minority Festival Costume alongside a furniture focus on Chinese yoke back armchairs. Several years later, he had a career change to explore and better understand the ‘lumps-and bumps’ encountered in traditionally upholstered furniture, when he was apprenticed for three years under French upholsterers in the United Kingdom. This led to the Royal Household where he became Senior Conservator – Restorer of Upholstery before expanding this into his current rôle leading the Royal Household’s team of gilders, cabinetmakers, upholsterers and soft furnishers.

Anna has wide-ranging financial experience gained mostly in the education and charity sectors.  She is happiest when working in an environment where the people are truly passionate about the organization, and knowing that the time she spends at work makes a difference to others.  When not working for the Society, she may be found in a similar role at one of the Halls in Oxford University.  She also volunteers for Cruse—the Bereavement Charity, which adds an important balance to her life.  She is also in the process of very slowly learning Greek and is the owner of a House Rabbit.

Iain Stephens:

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Iain read Biochemistry and Horticulture at Natal University before gaining his doctorate (specialising in Proteaceae post-harvest physiology) from Stellenbosch University.  Whilst a student he developed a passion for Cape Dutch furniture, begun years before with the enabling encouragement of his Great-Uncle, alongside intensive study of AbaThembu beadwork. He then read Theology at Stellenbosch Seminary before moving to Taiwan to eventually take up a professorship lecturing in languages at Ming Chuan University. It was in Taiwan that a chance encounter began a new direction studying and collecting Chinese Ethnic Minority Festival Costume with a focus on the Raojia-speaking Miao, Shui and Dong groups living in China’s Eastern Guizhou, Western Hunan and Northern Guangxi regions.

Arriving in the United Kingdom, a career change to explore and better understand the ‘lumps-and-bumps’ encountered in traditionally upholstered furniture, saw him apprenticed for three years under French upholsterers. This has led, several years later, to his current role serving as Senior Conservator – Restorer of Upholstery in The Royal Household where he heads up a small team of upholsterers and soft furnishers, responsible for both soft furnishings and upholstered furniture conservation and restoration projects within the Royal Collection.

Harry Bonar Law:

Harry graduated from the University of Leeds with a BA in Art and Design and now works as part of the Valuations team at Bonhams. Across his tenure at Bonhams, he has worked within both Business Development and Art Handling, before specialising in Valuations. He is currently training to become a general valuer with a particular interest in English campaign furniture.

Kate Hay studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University and worked for five years in the Civil Service, before retraining and working for an antique dealer.  She then joined the Victoria and Albert Museum, where after gaining the Museums Diploma and short spells in other departments, she worked in the Furniture department until her retirement in 2021.  While at the V & A she contributed to numerous gallery and cataloguing projects including the British Galleries and the Dr Susan Weber Gallery of Furniture.  She has lectured on diverse subjects including 17th century japanned furniture, 19th century garden furniture and 19th century Derbyshire marble furniture.  Her ground-breaking article on the 19th century Maltese mosaic marble industry, 'Mosaic Marble Tables by J. Darmanin & Sons of Malta', was published in Furniture History in 2010.  More recently, she re-discovered and edited two rare silent films, now available on the V & A Website, and published in her article in Furniture History 2018, 'Chippendale, the Movie: The Rediscovery of 1920s 'Biopics' of Chippendale and Sheraton'.  She is a long-standing member of the FHS and has previously served on the Council.

Amy is an art historian, curator and lecturer with a broad range of research interests in British fine and decorative arts from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. She has degrees in History, and Literature & Arts from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, where she completed her DPhil, ‘Art & Aristocracy in late Stuart England’, in 2022. She is Curator of the Faringdon Collection at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, and the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham. As a curator, she contributed to the exhibitions British Baroque (2020) and Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 (2024) at Tate Britain, and most recently curated That Marvellous Atmosphere: Stanley Spencer and Cookham Regatta at the Stanley Spencer Gallery (2025). Amy is also an Accredited Lecturer for the Arts Society and a Departmental Tutor at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. Her publications include ‘The Furniture Patronage of Elizabeth Somerset (nee Percy), Duchess of Somerset’ (Furniture History, 2021) and ‘John van Collema: A Dutch India Goods Merchant in London’ (RKD Studies: Close Encounters, 2024)

Adriana is academic director of an MA  run by the Institut d'Etudes Superieures des Arts (IESA) and the Wallace collection on the history and business of art and collecting, which is validated by Warwick University.  Previously she was Deputy Director, Sotheby's Institute where she specialised in the history of decorative arts. She has written various articles on English furniture, including the discovery of a table designed for Queen Mary's Water Gallery at Hampton Court. She also wrote on William Beckford's collections of furniture for the exhibition held at the Bard Graduate Centre and Dulwich Art Gallery, 2002-3 and completed an article on the new world objects in Cosimo I de Medici's collection in Curiosity and Wonder, ed. A.Marr and J.H. Evans published by Ashgate Press. She is now conducting further research into the display of the Medici Tribuna in the Uffizi. Most recently, she has written an essay on the nineteenth-century interpretation of the Renaissance interior.

After receiving her undergraduate degree in History of Art from Vassar College, Jill Bace joined Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum as Assistant Curator of Ancient and Classical Art.  An MA in Art History from the University of Michigan and a RSA Diploma in Fine and Decorative Arts at Christie’s in London, where she specialised in 17^th and 18^th century furniture and ceramics, were followed by a stint volunteering on the British Galleries Project at the V&A.  She has worked as a freelance writer and for the past two decades has been a Guide Lecturer at the Wallace Collection.  She is on the Steering Committee of the Society for the History of Collecting as Head of Communications, including all social media and a regular online Newsletter.

Megan read Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford and in 2006 completed her DPhil on the persecution of Protestants in England in the reign of Mary I, before turning to Art History.  Having worked as a Specialist in Furniture and Works of Art for Bonhams Auctioneers until 2015, Megan joined the National Trust as a cataloguer on its Furniture Research & Cataloguing Project before taking up the role of Assistant National Curator for Furniture in January 2021. 

Laurie Lindey is a socio-economic and furniture historian of the early modern period, her work primarily focused on the London furniture trade over the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuries. She has published articles on several London cabinet makers, including Edward Traherne and Grace Coxed, as well as co-authoring articles about John Coxed and Gerrit Jensen with Adam Bowett.  She has also published some of her research and statistical data from her doctoral thesis about the London Joiners’ Company, its jurisdiction and ability to oversee, defend and regulate its membership and more broadly the furniture industry. She is currently the managing editor of BIFMO.

Clarissa Ward has been associated with the FHS for many years, having held the positions of Events and Grants Secretary and then Hon. Secretary.  Her main interest lies in Victorian and Edwardian furniture and she has been a volunteer researcher to the 19^th century furniture curator at the V&A for over twenty years, assisting with many publications and acquisitions.  In her role as BIFMO Editor 1840-1914, she has been responsible for writing biographies of many leading furniture makers who exhibited in the major International and UK exhibitions, managing the recent project on the Arts & Crafts Exhibition catalogues, 1888-1916, and regularly contributing to the FHS Newsletter and talks.