Tony Geering

Puritan Values

Founder of Puritan Values, formally trained engineer, specialist in decorative arts

Tony Geering is a formally trained engineer whose working life has always been defined by standards, precision, and judgement. He brings that discipline into the study of furniture and decorative arts, reading construction, materials, and workmanship with an exacting eye. Over more than four decades, he has built Puritan Values into a trusted resource for private collectors, interior designers, and institutional projects, where accuracy, accountability, and calm authority matter.

Tony is the founder of Puritan Values, established over four decades ago through a sustained focus on sourcing, researching, and placing period furniture and decorative works. His approach is evidence-led: what the object is made from, how it is constructed, what has been altered, and what the details can reliably support. Every piece is treated as a historical document, something to be read carefully before it is described, restored, or placed.

An engineer’s eye for quality

As an engineer by training, Tony assesses furniture the way a skilled maker would: proportion, tolerances, joinery, fastenings, tool marks, and finishes. He reads how timber has moved over time, where an intervention has occurred, and whether a surface has been preserved or overwritten. The details that matter most are often the least dramatic: a joint line, a hinge position, a wear pattern, a subtle mismatch in timber or patina. This is the level where authenticity is won or lost.

When evidence is strong, the reasoning is stated clearly. When evidence is incomplete, the description remains conservative, because integrity is more valuable than certainty. That combination, technical scrutiny and historical understanding, underpins how Puritan Values describes, restores, and places important works.

How Tony evaluates a piece

Tony’s first questions are practical: Is the construction consistent with the period? Do the materials and fittings make sense? Is the finish honest, or has it been overworked? From there, the research begins, comparing form and detailing against known patterns, documented examples, and period sources.

A life in the trade

Tony’s early years were spent learning directly in the market: auction houses such as Durrants, and the intensity of Brick Lane Market in East London in the early 1990s. Those years functioned as a second apprenticeship, handled stock, sharp eyes, hard lessons, and the kind of practical knowledge that only comes from volume and repetition.

Before committing to antiques full time, Tony worked as an engineer in the oil and gas industry. He then took the risk early, opening a small second-hand shop in Lowestoft at 24 and building experience through house clearances and buying trips that sharpened his eye.

House clearances brought him into contact not only with quality objects but with the private histories behind them. Over time, his attention focused increasingly on the Arts and Crafts Movement, its integrity, craftsmanship, and seriousness of purpose, values that remain at the core of how Puritan Values operates today.

The trade teaches you quickly that taste is not enough. What matters is judgement: recognising what is original, what is later, what is rare, what is simply good, and what is worth preserving. Tony’s reputation is built on that judgement, backed by a long view of the market and a refusal to compromise standards for speed.

Tony also maintains an extensive reference library and uses it actively. Working from a large collection of illustrated reference books.

Museums and interior designers supplier

Through Puritan Values, Tony works with museums, interior designers, architects and private collectors worldwide, including the film and television industry. For over 20 years, he has supplied Liberty and Co of Regent Street with original Liberty pieces, including 18 of their annual exhibitions.

Some of the museums Tony has supplied include:

Blackwell House (National Trust)
The National Trust, William Morris museums and Sutton Hoo
The Victoria and Albert Museum
The Bröhan Museum, Berlin
Museum Hofmobiliendepot, Vienna
Le Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Notable private collectors Tony has supplied:

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber
Sir Frank Lowe
Andy Murray
John Paul Getty

Documentary work

Alongside Puritan Values, Tony produces and films long-form documentary projects focused on architecture, design, and restoration. The work reflects the same values that shape his dealing: accuracy, context, and respect for original workmanship. It is a way of recording design heritage properly, capturing buildings, interiors, and details before they change, and presenting them without simplifying what makes them significant.

One series explores Art Nouveau architecture across Europe, documenting standout examples on location with releases planned for YouTube.

A second project follows the restoration of an abandoned Anglo-Japanese château, La Maison des Fleurs (built 1886), which Tony has documented since 2019, an ongoing record of conservation decisions and the practical realities of bringing historic interiors back to life while preserving their character. View Puritan Values media.

Saving the Middlesex Guildhall clock

The Middlesex Guildhall clock was saved and returned to its original position, and panelling removed during the Supreme Court renovation was salvaged and reinstated. This kind of work matters because it protects original craftsmanship from being lost to redevelopment and ensures historically significant detail remains intact for future generations, one example among the many pieces of history that have been preserved by Tony.

Tony’s interest in restoration is rooted in standards: sympathetic intervention, period-correct methods where possible, and a refusal to “improve” objects at the expense of their integrity.

In practice, that means conserving what can be conserved, replacing only what must be replaced, and avoiding the easy shortcuts that erase age and character. The goal is continuity, so the object or interior remains itself, not a modern reinterpretation.

Television

Tony presented for Discovery Channel (2018–2021) on The Restorers and appeared regularly on BBC’s Dickinson’s Real Deal. He co-presented Kirstie’s Homemade Homes, and has featured in The Antiques Road Trip and Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.