As a boy, Tom Hurst would accompany his father to as many as five auctions in a day. Nowadays, he laments, they would be the only people in the room, since most other bidders prefer to attend online. That the father with whom he careered about the country is Edward Hurst (Wol June 2015), the doyen of antique dealers, proves that the apple does not fall far from the tree. At just 24 years old he is an up-and-coming specialist in historic ethnographic art.
Dealing is in Tom’s DNA, so much so that in primary school he tried to buy a stuffed wolf from the art department. His offer was refused, but the wolf was later sold, much to his ire. Later, he would haul everything from Bunsen burners to cast-iron grates out of the school skips to sell them, though he admits to making only a small amount per item. Then, at the age of 12, he started collecting military medals. These he sold in order to deal in large pieces of vintage glass, until they too were replaced by a new interest – ethnographica, a passion that continues to this day.
In those early years, Tom would jam his collections into his bedroom at home. When his mother, the ceramicist Jane Hurst, switched careers to garden design, he transformed her studio into an unofficial HQ for his emporium. ‘Whenever people came to dinner, I would drag them in and try to sell them something before they had even sat down. Or I would set up outside the gates in the village even if no one came past – I think I tried to beckon people in. In retrospect I must have been very weird as a child,’ he says with a laugh.
As soon as he left school, Tom began doing the rounds at antique fairs and auctions. Three years ago, as his reputation and collection grew, he moved into a house of his own: an early 18th-century semi-detached stone cottage in Somerset, the ground floor of which has sunk to below street level with the passage of time. The front door leads straight into a large living room, as wide as the house itself. This had originally been two rooms until Tom knocked them through, opening up a fireplace at one end, which is now presided over by a huge punch-decorated plate from Nigeria. Upstairs, two bedrooms have been made into three, creating an office office-cum-library for Tom’s 500-strong collection of reference books.
He is an old soul, like someone marooned in Sarawak in a Somerset Maugham short story. For our interview, he wears a floral-patterned jacket with a necklace of plastic pearl beads, ‘really tacky ones which even have a magnetic clasp’, the wearer concedes. His hair, pink when we last met, is now a quieter shade of blond. In short, he is someone with particular, even one-of-a-kind, tastes.
Tom describes his surroundings at home as ‘curated chaos’, the surfaces of heavy oak tables and consoles covered with a miscellany of things: old glass, fragments of limestone with Corinthian detailing, a miniature Arts and Crafts chair, traditional North American children’s snow shoes and Batavian candlesticks. A watercolour depicting the coat of arms of an old Yorkshire family is unexpectedly connected to an old oak chair bearing the same crest, a ‘silly detail which I was thrilled to find’, says Tom. Curated it most certainly is, but chaos it is not. Despite the abundance of objects and artworks in his home, Tom knows the precise location of every piece, its provenance and much of its history.
There are no curtains or blinds in his house – he has never found them of importance and so happily does without. Instead, large model boats are strategically placed to obscure the interior from curious passers-by (although Tom cheerfully admits that his neighbours occasionally remark on changes to the rooms' arrangements, so evidently his efforts at discretion are less than fully effective).
Upstairs more curation reigns: the walls are used to store or display varied pieces, including a collection of Japanese 19th-century panels, a large Guinean gable-mask, and a series of empty frames which await his future finds. The bathroom, whose window is home to yet another boat defence, is decorated with Tom's collection of Imari plates. Meanwhile, his bedroom walls feature a purple Cameroonian headdress, which matches his lavender bed sheets; an array of architectural cabinetry drawings, fastidiously connected with paper clips; and an assemblage of shells that took his fancy. Some extraordinary, idiosyncratic garments hang on a clothing rail with a linen-and-silk housecoat to the fore, which has been worn with aplomb by its owner to a host of ‘local dinners and get-togethers’.
Tom sees the chase for antiques as an ongoing procession of wonderful things that get passed from person to person forevermore. ‘There is nothing better than being in a muddy field surrounded by interesting, quirky things. It only takes a moment to see if you want a piece and then to know if the price is worth it,’ he says.
The hope is that beautiful, rare objects from some unknown country house will one day turn up in a shop, market or auction for Tom to happen across. It's this hunt for an elusive dream object that keeps him going, despite concerns about technological developments that threaten his chosen career path. ‘Anyone with little or no knowledge can chuck a photo into Google Al and it will come up with similar items, which gives anyone the power to become a dealer,’ he says. ‘But, as in everything, it is the buying that is the fun bit. If I were a collector, I would have to get a proper job. And who wants a proper job?’
A version of this article also appeared in the February 2025 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. Learn about our subscription offers.
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