After Cambridge, Simon Jervis worked at Leicester Museum and, from 1966, at the Victoria & Albert Museum (Department of Furniture), before being appointed Director and Marlay Curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (1990). From 1995 he was Director of Historic Buildings, The National Trust, retiring in 2002. He was President of the Society of Antiquaries of London (1995-2001). He was Chairman of the Furniture History Society (1998-2013, Editor 1988-92) and of the Walpole Society (2003-2013), and was also until early 2013 Chairman of the Leche Trust and of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum, and a Trustee of the Emery Walker Trust. He also served as a member of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art (2007-2014). He remains a Director and Trustee of the Burlington Magazine.  His books include High Victorian Design (1983), The Penguin Dictionary of Design and Designers (1984) and Roman Splendour, English Arcadia (2015, with Dudley Dodd), A Rare Treatise on Interior Decoration and Architecture, Jooseph Friedrich Zu Racknitz’s Presentation and History of the Taste of the leading Nations (2019).  He has also published a large number of articles, guidebooks, book reviews, and exhibition catalogues.

Christopher Rowell is the National Trust’s Furniture Curator. This specialist role involves researching, publishing and advising on an extensive international collection displayed in historic interiors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. About eighty of the Trust’s houses contain notable furniture, woodwork and picture frames. He has published widely on country house collections, including editing and contributing to Ham House: 400 Years of Collecting and Patronage, published in July 2013 by Yale University Press. This is the first in a series of Yale books, published in partnership with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, on individual great houses of the National Trust and on aspects of its rich and varied collections.  Forthcoming volumes will include Christopher Rowell’s Furniture in National Trust Houses.

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.  She is also the Furniture History Society's website officer.

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.

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).

Dr McCaffrey-Howarth is an art historian specialising in European decorative arts, material culture and the histories of collecting.  She was recently appointed the Curator of 17th and 18th Century Ceramics and Glass at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Since September 2018, she has been a lecturer on the History of Design Masters course at the V&A and the Royal College of Art, where she continues to teach courses on country houses and material culture.  She gained her PhD at the University of Leeds, where she is now a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies. She is a trustee of both the French Porcelain Society and the English Ceramics Circle, and was a founding member and is currently a trustee of the Society for the History of Collecting. She is an External Examiner for the University of Sunderland.

Dr Saunt is the Oliver Ford Curatorial Research Fellow at the Victoria & Albert Museum where she works in the Furniture & Woodwork section of the Performance, Furniture, Textiles and Fashion Department. She specializes in furniture and interiors of the long 18th century.  Jenny is an active member of the Furniture History Society and convenes the annual New Insights Conference at the Society of Antiquaries of London, which focuses on the architecture and interiors of the early modern period in Great Britain.  Before arriving at the V&A, Jenny worked as a curator for the Bryan Collections, a private collection of English furniture and decorative arts, during which time she collaborated with other private collections and museums on numerous research projects, exhibitions, publications, and online collections projects. Her PhD at the Courtauld focused on the design and production of decorative lime plasterwork in early modern England. Jenny came originally from a design and practice background, working first as a theatre designer, then in research and conservation of historic interiors. She has published and lectured widely, and taught at the Courtauld Institute, the V&A and on the Royal College of Art courses.

Philip Peacock has been a member of the Furniture History Society for a number of years and has provided professional or pro bono legal advice to its trustees at various times during this period. He was formerly a solicitor in private practice in London at Lovell, White & King (now Hogan Lovells) and Radcliffes. He has been involved in management at both firms in addition to his specialisation in business and corporate work, including partnerships, charities and NGOs. He is now retired from regular practice but continues to offer informal advice largely of a practical nature as a member of particular charitable organisations. These include two boat clubs and the Canada-UK Council which is a bilateral public policy group of which he was Chair for fourteen years and remains a Board member.

He has had a long-standing interest in antique furniture and architecture as well as in antiquarian books, paintings and the decorative arts. He is actively involved in furniture making, furniture restoration, book binding and book conservation. He is married to Helena, a fellow (retired) solicitor who is currently involved in the magistracy, higher education governance and pensions. They live in North London, with connections to Devon (notably Exeter Chiefs). Whilst delighted to put his name forward for election to Council, Philip wishes to emphasise that he cannot match the knowledge and expertise of other members in those fields most closely connected with the Society’s core objectives.

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.  

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.

Kate Hay:

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, has previously served on the Council and also co-chairs the Society's Events Committee.

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.

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.

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 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.       

Beatrice Goddard has an undergraduate degree in History of Art from the University of East Anglia, MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and Diploma in Arts Management from Digby Stuart College, Roehampton. After working for Bonhams Auctioneers she was Exhibitions Manager at both the Crafts Council and the National Portrait Gallery then latterly a Curatorial Assistant at the American Museum in Bath and freelance exhibition organiser.

Keith Nicholls has a degree in Economics & Politics and is a qualified accountant. He spent much of his career working for a division of Emerson, a multi- billion-dollar US conglomerate, in a variety of roles including finance, operations and purchasing. Following time in Slovakia, setting up financial controls and reporting for a new manufacturing plant, Keith joined Arts & Business, one of the larger Prince of Wales charities, as finance director. After a number of roles, both paid and unpaid, in the voluntary sector, Keith joined The Society in April 2015.

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 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.       

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.  She is also the Furniture History Society's Honorary Secretary.