Christopher Gibbs

[2] The New York Times described him as a "man of infinite taste, judgment and experience, the one who introduced a whole generation to the distressed bohemian style of interior design.

[7] At the same time, Gibbs was running his own antiques business, which he had started in 1958, making regular trips to Morocco to acquire stock.

It was at one of Gibbs' Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, dinner parties that Jagger whispered to the fashion designer Michael Fish, "I'm here to learn how to be a gentleman".

[11] Gibbs was the set designer on the 1970 film Performance, directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg and starring James Fox and Mick Jagger.

It had taken experts, led by Gibbs' friend Sir Roy Strong, 30 years to complete the authentication of the work as "a long lost masterpiece" by Hans Holbein of Thomas Wyatt the Younger.

[16] In 2007 it appeared for sale at $10 million on a dealer's stand at the Maastricht Art Fair[17] after the attribution to Holbein was accepted by the TEFAF vetting committee.

[18] Gibbs played a key role in persuading his friend John Paul Getty, Jr. to donate £40 million to the British National Gallery.

[20] The sale showed his eclectic tastes: lots included a dining table supposedly made from one of the first pieces of mahogany brought to England from the New World in the 17th century, and a portrait of Cornish eccentric John Nichols Thom.