By Cynthia Wihardja, Beau Nash Antiques
How a Bath Couple Avoided a £1,400 Mistake
When Sarah and Tim downsized to a walkable home in Bath, one antiques trip nearly cost them £1,400 on a table and lampshades that looked perfect in the shop — and wrong in every room of their house.
When Sarah and Tim sold their farmhouse — the one where they’d raised three children — for a central house in the city, the move itself was the easy part. What remained was furnishing it: their existing sofas, tables, and wardrobes came from storage, but the finishing pieces — lamps, occasional tables, the things that make a house feel lived-in rather than moved-into — still needed finding.
They spotted several at our interior galleries on Brock Street — a Regency side table, a pair of Regency urn lamps, a blue and white porcelain shoulder lamp, a gold bulbous Kashmiri lamp for character, and a Chinoiserie side table they were, by their own admission, “a little obsessed with.”
But a shop is not a home. Lighting, proportions, and the personality of a room don’t always translate from showroom to sitting room — something Sarah and Tim weren’t sure about until they spoke to Tristan, one of the shop’s team members. He mentioned something most Bath shoppers don’t know is on offer: a home trial. Beau Nash will deliver selected pieces to a local home so buyers can see them in situ before committing.
Tristan arrived with four lamps and two tables & helped the couple move them from room to room, testing how each looked against their own furniture and light. Together they settled on all four lamps and only one table — the Regency flamed mahogany piece won out, while the £1,250 Chinoiserie table they’d been “a little obsessed with” in the shop was brought back along with two £75 lampshades that, once seen under their own lighting, didn’t suit the rooms after all. “Sometimes,” Sarah said, “the thing you love in a shop is best left there.”
For anyone furnishing a home in Bath, that’s the real value of a trial: not only the pieces themselves, but the certainty that they belong before you’ve paid, unpacked, and lived with the regret. If you’re furnishing — or refurnishing — a home this season, ask us about booking a home trial.
Beau Nash Antiques
Antique Shop in Bath
28 and 31 Brock St, BA1 2
beaunashbath.com; info@beaunashbath.com; @beaunashbath
07535137808