The Renter Warden

Our Renter Warden is Tom Christopherson

I am Chairman of the British Art Market Federation which represents the art market to Government and other bodies, and I sit on the executive committee of the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers.  I helped form the Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars and was Master of that Company in 2016/17; more recently I served as Chairman of their Charitable Trust.

I joined the Tylers and Bricklayers in 1986 at the suggestion of Canon Leyland Bird, then Father of the Company, and I recently chaired the Company’s Treasures Committee.  This Committee looks after the Company’s most prized posessions while keeping watch for antique items relating to the Company that come up on the art market from time to time.  Through my grandmother I am proud to follow the various members of the Bird Clan (and one Christopherson) who have provided several Company Masters and Clerks over the years.

I read History at Oxford, with enjoyable employment during the vacations as an “assistant engineer” with construction firm Wiltshiers.  I subsequently became a solicitor with the law firm Withers, with the international law firm Freshfields and then as European General Counsel at Sotheby’s, subsequently working as a legal consultant to Bonhams and a law firm specialising in legal issues connected with the arts. 

I am married to Katie and we have two adult children, one an artist and the other working in the film industry in Australia.  At home in West Sussex I am a keen gardener and Chairman of the Wisborough Green Horticultural Society, which organises two flower shows and various other horticultural events through the year.  As a “lockdown project” I much enjoyed building a garden wall, but confess that I used stone not brick!