About

Rarity is not always reflected by price - sometimes the least expensive item can tell an invaluable tale. Frustration with the art market's narrowing curiosity, diminishing connoisseurship, increasingly monotone emphasis solely on financial value and neglect for sustainability led Sandy Rich to found Tregeagle in 2017 as a specialist dealership in historical, decorative and academic works of art, idiosyncratic objects and ethnographica.

Tregeagle's stock is drawn from a broad range of cultures and periods in a variety of media - the emphasis always being on the wealth of colourful interest, aside from pure monetary worth, which can be had from well-chosen works of art.

In a short space of time the business has gained a distinguished reputation as a source for genuine, remarkable and well-researched objects. As well as celebrated private collections around the world, works of art have been acquired through Tregeagle by a number of museums, galleries and internationally recognised institutions including:

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, U.K.
Bodleian Library, Oxford, U.K.
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, U.K.
Château de Lunéville, Monument Historique, Lorraine, France
Fondation Custodia (Collection Frits Lugt), Paris, France
Friends of Quarry (Headington Quarry conservation group), Oxford, U.K.
Hertford College, Oxford, U.K.
Mount Vernon, Virginia, U.S.A. (former home of George Washington)
Museo Internazionale del Presepe, Greccio, Italy 
Museum of Wimbledon, U.K.
National Lacrosse Hall of Fame & Museum, Maryland, U.S.A.
New York University, New York, U.S.A.
Oriel College, Oxford, U.K.
Summer Fields School Archives, Oxford, U.K.
The Newt in Somerset, Bruton, Somerset, U.K.
Tenterden & District Local History Museum, Kent, U.K.
University College, Oxford, U.K.
Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum, Worcestershire, U.K.

Alexander 'Sandy' Rich
Sandy was educated at Haileybury, where he was Head of 'Trevelyan' House (the same house as captained by author and Irish-revolutionary Robert Erskine Childers exactly a century earlier). He worked for a museum, a Bond Street art gallery and an international auction house before graduating in Theology from Durham University. He subsequently spent 25 years in art-market related financial services, working for some of the world's foremost art insurers, where leading art dealers, private collectors and museums were among his clients. In 1994 he was the lead underwriter on the "Frankfurt Art Theft" - the largest insured fine art robbery of all time (when two Turner masterpieces, on loan from Tate, were stolen from the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt (resulting in a claim of £24 million)).

In 2011 Sandy won the BBC’s "Antiques Master" quiz series and began to contemplate dealing in art on his own account. Three years later he guest-curated “Peace Breaks Out! London & Paris in the Summer of 1814” at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London – an exhibition which marked the bicentenary of the end of the Napoleonic Wars and showcased items made to commemorate the premature peace celebrations which followed Napoleon’s first exile to Elba.

Sandy has a Diploma in the History of Art from the University of Oxford, from where he graduated with 'Distinction'.

Services
With in-house expertise and an unrivalled network of trusted contacts, developed over decades and drawn from throughout the artworld, the business can offer professional advice on all aspects of collecting including:

             ◆   Purchase and sale of works of art
             ◆   Sourcing items
             ◆   Historical research and provenance inquiry
             ◆   Independent valuations for insurance or probate
             ◆   Curatorial advice
             ◆   Conservation, display and lighting
             ◆   Insurance and security
             ◆   High-end house clearance 
             ◆   Storage, packing, transport and shipping
             ◆   Import and export
             ◆   Interior design and decoration
             ◆   Discreet transaction of auction bids
             ◆   Personal shopping and gift buying 
             ◆   Film & TV prop location 
             ◆   Commissioning contemporary artworks and portraiture
             ◆   Tax & legal issues relating to cultural heritage and museum loans

Based in Oxfordshire, clients come from across Europe, America, the Middle and Far East and Australia.

                                      There's a house we can build
                                      Every room inside is filled
                                      With things from far away
                                      The special things I compile
                                      Each one there to make you smile
                                      On a rainy day
                                                           
                                   "A Million Dreams" Pasek & Paul

Sustainability ♻️
Sustainability is at the very heart of what we do. Just as with the objects we sell - our philosophy centres on appreciating, reusing and preserving what already exists.

Long before the introduction of EU Regulation 2025/40 on Packaging and Packaging Waste we committed to responsible and sustainable shipping practices. Endeavouring to set a higher standard for environmentally responsible retail we have, for many years, actively avoided single-use materials and prioritised the use of recycled packaging. We help to reduce waste by collecting, storing and reusing high-quality packaging. We encourage our customers to do the same by retaining packaging for their own future use.