Art dealer battles former intern over half of his £1m business

An antique dealer to celebrities is battling with a former intern over claims that he struck a deal in a juice bar to hand her half of his £1 million business.

Christopher Howe has run a dealership from Pimlico in London for the last 30 years with a client list that has included the Hollywood star Richard Gere and Lucian Freud, one of Britain’s greatest portrait artists.

The dealer, 63, started in the business by restoring gilded picture frames in a small “run down” shop in Belgravia before expanding into expensive antiques.

His business was split into two separate companies in 2014 and Howe is battling in a High Court dispute with Joanne Brierley, a family friend.

Brierley began working for Howe as an unpaid student intern in 2008, but the court has heard that she rose to become his trusted assistant.

She has told the judge that she helped Howe grow his business as a partner in all but name, and that as a result the dealer promised over lunch at Joe & The Juice in Wimbledon that she would have half of the textiles side of his business empire.

However, Howe later reneged on that agreement, the 37-year-old said. Howe has told the judge that he never made that promise to his former intern. The disagreement prompted Howe to sack Brierley as a director of the company.

At the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Judge Sally Barber has heard that over the years Howe provided antiques for some of Britain’s most famous cultural institutions — including The Royal Pavilion in Brighton and the Sir John Soane’s museum in London.

He was said to have provided an 18-foot high George I four poster bed — which was made in 1712 and restored by Howe — to Hampton Court Palace.

The dealer expanded to a bigger shop in Pimlico Road in 1995 as his reputation grew, with celebrity clients reportedly including Freud, who liked his “esoterically shabby chairs to use in his portraits”.

Brierley was an art student in 2008 when her college friend, Howe’s daughter, Holly, asked if he could offer an internship.

After graduating the next year, Brierley started working full-time with the dealer and in 2010 they agreed that she would develop the leather, fabrics and wallpaper side of his business, which was conducted from another premises nearby.

The court was told that three years later Howe suggested to Brierley that the side of the business that she was involved in should be placed into a separate company and that she would manage its “day-to-day affairs”.

Brierley has claimed that as part of the agreement she would have a 25 per cent share in the separated company, subject to revenue targets being met.

She said that in 2018, Howe made a fresh promise that she would be given a 50 per cent stake in the shares of the business, of which she was by then already a minor shareholder and managing director.

However, the pair fell out after Brierley returned from an extended business trip in India and told her mentor that she wanted to leave and set up her own business.

In a preliminary judgment, Barber said that Howe had denied that any share transfer was agreed in 2018, “or at all.”

The case will return to court at a later date.

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