Rufus Bird

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. He has experience in caring for large complex collections, whose owners may need to consider tax and inheritance planning, loans, offers in lieu, conservation management plans, restoration, collection (or preventive) care, salvage / emergency planning, research and valuations. After graduating in History of Art from Cambridge University he joined Christie’s as a graduate trainee and joined the Furniture Department in 1999, where he worked on notable projects including Tyntesfield, Somerset and Dumfries House, Ayrshire. In 2010 he was appointed by HM Queen Elizabeth II as Deputy Surveyor of the Queen’s Works of Art. At the Royal Collection he had responsibility for about 500,000 works of decorative art across fifteen residences, he oversaw all conservation of decorative art objects in three workshops. In 2018 he was appointed Surveyor of the Queen’s Works of Art. During his time in post he saw the three volume catalogue of Chinese and Japanese works of Art to publication, co-curated the Charles II exhibition, contributed chapters in The First Georgians 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).