The home of the founders of iconic London shop Jamb

You could describe my life as BC and AC – “before Charlotte” and “after Charlotte”’ – says Will Fisher with a laugh. He and his wife – the aforementioned Charlotte – own and run Jamb, in London’s Pimlico Road. Dealing in antiques and immaculately reproduced eighteenth- and nineteenth-century chimneypieces, lights, and garden ornaments, they have, between the two of them, done much to bring that much sought-after – but rarely achieved – English country-house look to the mainstream aesthetic.

But to take Will at his word and assume that before Charlotte his life was without event would be far from the truth. A man of immense charm, with an obsessive eye for detail, Will first developed an interest in antiques at the age of 10, when he befriended the son of the antiques dealer Warner Dailey. ‘We lived in Blackheath and Warner’s house was, to me, the most extraordinary house in the world,’ he recalls. ‘It was early Georgian, had a huge cantilevered stone staircase and wonderful mosaic floors, and it was furnished in that great British way of mixing junk with really serious antiques. He had a phenomenal eye and incredible style, and I suppose he fuelled my taste for interiors.’

MAY WE SUGGEST: Jamb director Henry Bickerton's Victorian town house

Warner became a second father to Will; each summer, with the car piled high with antiques and the boys squeezed into the back, they would tour the dealers, buying and selling, always arriving home with an empty car. ‘In those days, there was a constant flow of pieces; we would be jumping in and out of the car and even dragging things out of skips,’ says Will.

With such experience behind him, Will joined Christie’s for a time before spending a year in Manchester reading history of art. Academia, however, was not for him. ‘At the end of the year, I had to be introduced to one class, since I had never once attended a lecture,’ he says. He left with what he refers to as a ‘BA Honours one third’. Back in London, he decided against rejoining Christie’s and worked for various dealers before deciding to go it alone. He bought a red Mercedes van, christened it ‘The Van Rouge’ and on his first day out bought a chimneypiece, selling it to LASSCO for an £80 profit.

His reputation for the unique and beautiful increased and he was back in his element reliving the Warner Dailey days, but such pieces were becoming rarer. Several years later, he anchored himself in Core One, a group of independent dealers just off the King’s Road, joining forces with Sean Cream, whose premises there included a restoration workshop.

‘I fell into reproduction almost by accident,’ he explains. ‘The uniqueness of a piece would mean that once it had been sold, it might be 50 years before another came along. Sean and I decided to make facsimiles while we had the piece in our hands. There was no plan; it was just the desire to make an accurate copy of a unique piece that we felt we would not see again.’

From the King’s Road, he moved to the Pimlico Road and started to have some pieces made in China, as well as at a sister company based in Wandsworth. All restoration of chimneypieces and lanterns is now done at this workshop by a dedicated and specialist team of craftsmen.

By 2003, the business was doing well but it was run in a pretty haphazard manner. ‘There were bits of paper everywhere and no follow-through with orders,’ Will admits. Then, on a visit to New York, he was invited to a dinner at Balthazar with family friends, and there he met Charlotte. ‘It was one of those moments when time stood still,’ he remembers.