ABOUT

Antiques have been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I am the fifth generation of a family involved with wood and timber, and grew up surrounded by antiques through my father, who remains an antiques dealer today. I began dealing professionally in 1996, but over time antique boxes became much more than a particular interest. They became an enduring fascination.

What interests me is not simply age, rarity or value. It is the moment when exceptional design, materials, craftsmanship and proportion come together in a single object.

I turn down the overwhelming majority of boxes I encounter. The pieces I choose have to provoke an immediate response — what I have always called the heart flutter. There has to be something about a box that makes me want to understand it.

That understanding comes through the work itself.

I examine every box in extraordinary detail. During conservation I will dismantle its fittings, mechanisms and components, following the decisions made by the craftsman who originally assembled it. Hidden construction can reveal as much about the quality of a piece as the surfaces intended to be seen.

I have always felt that only two people should ever work on a box: the person who originally made it, and me.

In some cases that is quite literally what has happened. A box may have remained untouched since it left the original maker's workshop, and I may be the first person to work on it since it was assembled. To encounter the original craftsman's work in that way creates a remarkable connection across generations, and brings with it a particular sense of responsibility. Every detail is studied and understood, and the same care is given to the parts that remain hidden as to those intended to be seen.

Many of the antique dressing cases I acquire are exceptional works of cabinetmaking. Their design, materials, craftsmanship and proportion are what first draw me to them, and it is these qualities that I seek to preserve.

Through careful conservation and sympathetic adaptation, I give these cases a new purpose as jewellery boxes, while preserving the character, craftsmanship and history that made them exceptional in the first place.

I think of this as conservation through adaptation.

Each interior is individually conceived and made for the box it belongs to. Its design is guided by the character, proportions and details of the original case, with the aim of creating something worthy of the cabinetmaker who made it: a continuation of an exceptional object, designed to be used and treasured for another generation.

Time is largely irrelevant to this process. A single box can absorb hundreds of hours. There are no production targets and no reason to take shortcuts. The work is finished when I can look at it and feel there is nothing for which I need to apologise.

The same curiosity that drives the conservation also drives the Library.

A name stamped onto a lock, a retailer's label, a patent, an address or an unusual construction detail can open an unexpected path into the history of a box. Over many years I have accumulated this research alongside the boxes themselves.

The Library brings that material together, placing the objects within the wider world in which they were made.

The Collection and the Library are therefore two parts of the same thing. One records the objects I have been fortunate enough to find and work upon. The other records what those objects have taught me.

Ultimately, Daniel Lucian is not about selling antique boxes.

It is about the enthusiasm, love and healthy obsession that surrounds them. If that enthusiasm encourages someone to look more closely, notice something they had never noticed before, and enter a world they did not know existed, then the purpose of this website has been fulfilled.

The box is simply where that journey begins.