Antique Furniture Store Near Me in Kensington: Butchoff Antiques Since 1964

Butchoff Antiques trades from 154 Kensington Church St, London W8 4BN, and its showroom opens Monday to Friday from 10 am to 6 pm, with Saturdays and Sundays by appointment only. Anyone typing antique furniture store near me between Notting Hill Gate and Kensington High Street will find a family-run, 3,000 sq ft gallery here, established in 1964 and specialising in English and Continental decorative arts of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Ian Butchoff has been in the business for more than 50 years and learnt the trade at his father's knee, starting out by selling jugs and basins as a 13-year-old. Today he is regarded by his peers as one of the country's leading experts in exhibition-quality 19th-century furniture. He has vetted furniture at London fairs including Olympia, the BADA Fair and LAPADA Berkeley Square, and he is a patron of the Wallace Collection.

The gallery describes itself as a third-generation family business. Ian's nephew Adam Kaye joined in 1995 after fine and decorative art courses at Sotheby's Institute of Art, and he now leads the design and curation of the Kensington showroom. His younger brother James Kaye followed in 2003, runs vendor relationships and daily operations, and has sat on the BADA Tech committee since 2018. Gallery manager Rainier Schraepen, who arrived in 2018, oversees historical and scholarly research.

Butchoff was one of the founder members of LAPADA, the Association of Art and Antiques Dealers, and Ian Butchoff sits on its board of directors. The firm also belongs to the British Antique Dealers' Association, the international dealers' body CINOA and the Kensington Church Street Dealer Association, so it works under their codes of practice. Since 2009 it has backed the Antiques are Green initiative, which argues that buying old furniture carries a smaller carbon footprint than buying new pieces.

Walk-in browsing runs on weekdays only, so a Tuesday or Thursday between 10 am and 6 pm is the simplest time to arrive without notice. Weekend visits need an appointment, which turns a Saturday into a private viewing with a member of the team rather than a casual browse. Inside, the 3,000 sq ft space mixes English, French and Italian tables, desks, seating, mirrors and sculpture, so allow at least an hour.

The website shows only a small part of the stock, and the gallery asks buyers searching for something particular to get in touch by email at info@butchoff.com. Trade clients and private collectors can join a members-only VIP programme that offers first sight of new acquisitions, access to a warehouse selection not open to the public, and trade pricing. Each listing online carries a reference number, which makes it easy to ask for a specific piece at the counter.

Plan around the fair calendar. Butchoff exhibits at the LAPADA Berkeley Square Fair in Mayfair from 28 October to 1 November 2026, and several catalogued pieces, including the Regency specimen marble table described below, are listed among its selected works for that stand. In February 2026 the firm took more than 80 pieces to the Palm Beach Show in Florida for its eleventh consecutive year, shipping English, French and Italian furniture straight from the Kensington Church Street gallery.

The headline table of the current acquisitions is an exhibition-quality centre table attributed to Jackson and Graham, the London firm that showed furniture at the 1867 Paris Exhibition. Made in England around 1870, it is built in satinwood with holly, purpleheart, harewood and bone inlay, ebonised highlights and foliate motifs taken from designs by Owen Jones. The circular top measures 127 cm across, and the listed price is £85,000.

For Grand Tour taste, a Late Regency specimen marble top centre table costs £45,000. Its mahogany base is English, around 1830, standing on scrolled feet carved with stylised palm leaves. The Italian top, from around 1820, is inlaid radially with more than 140 rare marbles and hardstones around a lapis lazuli cabochon, inside a verde antico border. The listing notes that a similar lapis-centred top is on display at London's Natural History Museum.

Gilt and painted furniture is represented by a pair of demilune console tables in the Neoclassical style, English, around 1880, priced at £32,000. The D-shaped tables stand on giltwood bases with tapering legs and a frieze of running anthemia. Their satinwood tops are crossbanded with rosewood and painted in grisaille with a radiant half sunflower, floral medallions hung from lover-knot ribbons and garlands. Each table is 140 cm wide and 86 cm high.

The most characterful hallway piece is a large Black Forest bear umbrella stand from the Brienz area of Switzerland, carved in lindenwood around 1890. The bear stands with arms wrapped around a branch shaped for walking sticks, has glass eyes and sits above a drip pan, rising to 114 cm. It is priced at £35,000. At the smaller end of the latest acquisitions, a pair of mid-19th-century Chinese export famille rose ginger jars is listed at £15,000.

Butchoff keeps an in-house restoration team that follows a sympathetic, museum-style approach, aiming to respect the age of each object instead of making it look new. The services on offer include French polishing, a fresh furniture wax, seating re-upholstery, clock repairs and marble and sculpture restoration, and they are available to clients as well as stock. The design team also advises on furnishings, wall finishes, fine art and textiles for buyers who are working on a whole interior.

Start at Notting Hill Gate station on the Central, Circle and District lines, at the north end of Kensington Church Street. This upper stretch was once called Silver Street, and number 154 sits near the top, a few minutes' walk south of the station. After the showroom, keep heading downhill. At number 138, a Grade II listed house built in 1736 to 1737 was the home and studio of the painter Lucian Freud from the 1970s until 2011.

A few doors further down, number 128 carries a blue plaque for the composer Muzio Clementi, who lived there from 1820 to 1823. Continue to Campden Street, where a toll gate stood across the road until 1864, then follow the old Church Lane section past more listed Georgian and Victorian buildings towards St Mary Abbots, the parish church that gives the street its name. The route ends at Kensington High Street and High Street Kensington station.

Address: Butchoff Antiques, 154 Kensington Church St, London W8 4BN. Opening hours: Monday to Friday 10 am to 6 pm, with Saturdays and Sundays by appointment only. Email: info@butchoff.com. Nearest Tube: Notting Hill Gate on the Central, Circle and District lines, a short walk north, or High Street Kensington on the Circle and District lines at the far end of the street. The website also hosts a virtual tour of the gallery.