‘There's a connection people make with old things that they don't with new. They have a spirit to them,’ says Jonathan Conkey, director of Glasgow furniture restoration company Guild Antiques and Restoration. ‘There are times I wish pieces could talk. You wonder what has gone on around them and who has been here before you.’ We're speaking by phone, but I can hear the thrill in his voice when he adds that ‘occasionally you get these little signatures inside the frame, from people long gone, who made or
