It’s hard to describe the magic of the Old Knole. It’s a truly romantic building in an acre of walled garden, and one of the most significant houses in London’s Blackheath. It feels almost like it was dropped from space, plucked straight from some country house location. Through the eyes of a child – I was only about eight or nine years old when I first met the Daileys – it bordered on terrifying, because of the chaos and the beauty and the depth of Warner’s interests.
Those were the halcyon days of antique dealing, so the house was full of the most extraordinary artefacts; Warner dealt in some really quite glamorous things, but his joy in those objects could be matched with a skip find. It was about the soul of a piece, which increasingly people are starting to understand – the allure of certain objects. And, often, that allure is the surface, the patina of hands that have passed it from generation to generation. Warner is a real stickler – restoration was an absolutely last resort.
When he was younger, he used to travel the world looking for things. One time he unloaded thousands of flintlock rifles that he’d managed to buy from a maharaja in India. He’d also bought his sofa. It was the most beautiful piece of furniture, but the thing that was most charming about it was that on the arm there was a little area with a hinge that lifted up and there’d been a mouse living in it that had gnawed its way through the arm. There was something so magical about the fact that this extraordinarily glamorous article should have been brought to heel by a tiny rodent. Of course, it made the item more exciting, more real. That’s what Warner really understands – the the eccentricities of objects and their lives.
Warner has gone through through many reincarnations. The best way to describe him is as the David Bowie of dealing. He’s been Ziggy, he’s been The Man Who Fell to Earth. He’s like an out-of-control spaceship, careering from star to star. Passions would take him and he would be off. I was heartbroken when I heard that he’d gone into mid-century and 60s, 70s, even 80s furniture and objects – long before anyone else was doing it, of course. On paper, it made no sense; there was no connection to what he’d been collecting before. Warner is magnificent in his unpredictability. He went from dry, dusty commodes into moulded plastic to super kitsch overnight, and when he did he became one of the biggest dealers in the world. The contrast between that and the Old Knole was galaxies apart. In a way, it was sort of like space travel.
The other thing about Warner is that he isn’t precious about things. There were incredible arms and armour all the way up the cantilevered Portland stone staircase at the Old Knole, and Warner’s stepson, Sam, and I and our other mates would grab a weapon and have sword fights, totally annihilating these beautiful 17th-century arms, but Warner never got angry with us.
I spent most of my childhood at the Old Knole, and yet it’s hard to do it justice. Darling Buds of May makes it sound too twee. It certainly wasn’t that. Irreverently, it was Darling Buds of May on crack. The excitement of being there was immense, mixed with a frisson of absolute terror. The Stranglers’s 1977 Rattus Norvegicus album cover was shot there, as were several films. Waxworks and mannequins left over from the shoots ended up hanging from the ceiling or propped up in the lavatories. There was crazy stuff everywhere – Lord Lucan’s travelling case, incredible Russian furniture, pieces from Woburn Abbey… Warner has an incredible eye, especially for the strange. One of the Warner Dailey Collection lots on auction at Sworders is a handful of objects found in an alligator’s stomach, which really captures the essence of Warner’s philosophy: the bygone era, the tragedy, the horror, the humour.
Warner loves trading, he loves buying and selling, and he often got into trouble with his wife for doing so! He deals from the heart and he’s fearless. He can see both opportunity and beauty anywhere. That’s his genius as a dealer – being able to see not just the object but who that object should reside with, who the person is who will adore it.
The Warner Dailey Collection will be auctioned on Thursday 22 February 2024 at Sworders, London. For more information, visit sworder.co.uk
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