Our history
About Tony Geering
I left school at 16 years of age and began a four-year engineering apprenticeship with British Road Services. In my final year at Bury St Edmunds Technical Engineering college, I specialized in Turbine and Turbo Technologies. At twenty years of age, I then entered a career in the Oil and Gas Industry with Vetco Gray as an Installation and Production Engineer specializing in Well Heads, Completions, and Entire Shutdown Systems, later pioneering the SMS systems for National Oil Well which is now used all over the world. At 24 years old I decided to give up the Oil and Gas Industry to pursue a new career in Art and Antiques something I had been interested in from a very young age.
I often went to auctions as a child with my mum Gloria. They had always fascinated me. This is where the collector in me began and where those first seeds were sown. As a child collecting what most boys did, toy cars and marbles, the latter I still have. My new career got off to a very good start buying and selling at auctions, particularly Durrants Auction Rooms in Beccles where I cut my teeth in the world of art and antiques. At that time I also began selling from an area at the back of the Old Rag Market at Brick Lane antique market in East London. Driving up from Suffolk every Saturday night I would arrive at around 3 am on a Sunday morning where I would first run around the market looking for items to buy, the hunt had begun. This is where my new apprenticeship began and where over the next seven years I learnt so much, and most importantly how the art and antique world worked. Brick Lane was a magnet to me, come rain or shine I was there. The Old School dealers of the time were so helpful, and so free with their knowledge and wisdom. I still have many friends from those formative early days.
When I began to deal in Antiques I noticed a huge opening in my area in House clearance. There was no real service in my area at that time except the auctions and within no time I was inundated, often doing two house clearances in one day. The house clearance work was very hard, yet so rewarding not just with what I found but the wonderful people who were so generous with their knowledge of the pieces they had owned throughout their lives or grown up with. As I learnt more I began to realise that I was naturally drawn towards items from The Arts and Crafts Movement. I began to study the period, researching pieces I had purchased and it soon became clear that The Arts and Crafts Movement was to become my life's passion. It is always so interesting, I am learning all the time, you never know what you might find and I love the hunt. It reminds me of when I was a young boy hunting for treasure with my brother Chris, how fond those memories are and once in a blue moon the treasure arrives at your door.
About Puritan Values
Puritan Values opened at The Dome in January 1998 occupying the former Drill Hall which was built in 1926 at the height of the roaring 20's. This wonderful historic Art Deco-style building which we extensively restored still echoes the Charleston dances and cocktails of that period. Robert Macgregor and I, a former craftsman who was a big part of Puritan Values, in the beginning, installed an original Art Nouveau staircase which was salvaged from a large London tenement in Chelsea, which we restored and modified slightly to fit into the Dome. We also retained the original pine Tongue and Groove paneling which covers the entire interior walls and ceilings of the building and made it what it is today, injecting new life into this almost derelict building which was completely run down and even flooded with rainwater when we took it over.
The Dome has over 13,500 square feet of retail space filled to the brim with original pieces making it the largest collection of Arts and Crafts and Decorative and Important Works of Art for sale in the British Isles. There is usually only around 50% of my current stock on the website at any one time, so if you are looking for something in particular then please browse the website and feel free to e-mail me with your requirements and I will look to see if there is something not on the website that would be perfect for you.