Rufus Bird

Director of Decorative Arts and Heritage Collections, Europe at Gurr Johns

Rufus Bird is an art advisor at Gurr Johns where he is Director of Decorative Arts and Heritage Collections, Europe. He assists clients of all types and budgets in the formation and/or sale of their collections and is currently re-establishing the renowned name of Mallett, the antique dealership also part of the Gurr Johns group. After graduating in the History of Art from Cambridge University he joined Christie’s furniture department in 1997, where he worked on notable projects including Tyntesfield, Somerset and Dumfries House, Ayrshire. In 2010 he was appointed by HM Queen Elizabeth II as Surveyor of the Queen’s Works of Art. At the Royal Collection he had responsibility for about 500,000 works of decorative art including furniture, tapestries, silver, arms and armour, ceramics, glass, sculpture, clocks etc. across fifteen royal residences. He oversaw all conservation of decorative art objects in three conservation workshops on the royal estate. In 2018 he was appointed Surveyor of the Queen’s Works of Art. During his time in post he oversaw the three volume catalogue of Chinese and Japanese Works of Art to publication, writing a chapter on the history of mounted Asian porcelains, co-curated the Charles II: Art and Power exhibition, contributed chapters in The First Georgians: Art and Monarchy exhibition catalogue and George IV: Art and Spectacle. He was a lead member of The Riesener Project culminating in a book published in 2021. He is an author of the official history of St James’s Palace (Yale, 2022) and has recently lectured in the USA and the UK on the history of St James’s Palace.