Some recent tv programmes give an accurate reflection of the romance and excitement of the antique dealers' road hunt trip and in the old days dealers spent a long time on the road. But given the alarmingly slim pickings and the high expenses compared to profits is the whole venture really viable?

I had a chance to consider this not long ago when a contact called me to view some items that had been locked up in a barn for thirty years. It was the contents of retired dealer's lock up that my friend had bought and it sounded promising.

After a short drive down lanes following a white van we came to a barn on a farm near the Thames and not far from William Morris's house at Kelmscott. On the wall of the nearby cottages was George Jack’s relief carving of Phillip Webb’s sketch showing Morris sitting in the meadows under trees contemplating the order of Mother Nature.

The barn was disappointing unfortunately. It was mostly old broken picture frames, an Edwardian bedroom suite too fancy for current taste, two antique pine chests (also a bit late), the top of an antique pine bookcase, a wormy elm coffer, and so on, all larded with bird dropping and thick dust. As it was a privilege to get the call and first chance i did my best and in the end was pleased to dig out from the rafters, as feeding swallows skimmed around my ears, a good set of elm wheelback kitchen chairs (rarely seen nowadays in a set) , some wooden toy boats and few chancy prints and paintings.

The barn also yielded three early carved oak coffer panels, all bleached and so wormed to be wafer-thin, but decorative and supposedly local to the area. Wood carvings such as these, with hand cut quatrefoil arrangements of leaf shapes, from the time of Charles I, was just the sort of thing that Morris may have been contemplating as he sat under his tree, it was just the thing he wanted to get back to, hand-made designs based on the forms of nature, a man made world tuned to the harmony of the natural.

Were Morris present he would no doubt also have been thought provoked by the swallows in his neighbour's barn, he might have admired the way their basket nest was built almost like an internal capstone directly above the window under the v- of the roof, a placement both pleasing in its symmetrical design and eminently practical for acrobatic ariel access.

Since ancient times swallows nests on dwellings have always been propitious sign, an indication of blessing on the home. This tradition was alive in this country in the time of Shakespeare and it is evoked by Banquo who notes by way of compliment to his hosts' the the swallows nest at the entrance to Macbeth's castle prior to the death of Duncan. It is a tradition that also still lives in parts of Europe in the countryside where until recent decades there was a folk art of carving and painting small wooden birds in pairs on branches or in family groups with nests and these would be hung on the outer wall by the kitchen door or around the verandah.

On buying trips in Europe i have sometimes found old examples of these carvings, they are a permanent entry on my shopping list, but more often than not when seen they are "privat", that is, the dealers and knockers won't sell them as they like to keep them themselves.

In the gypsy quarter of the town of Valahol in Central Europe recently I was invited to view some items in the back courtyard of the house of one of the head gypsies. The trellis on the verandah where we were doing business was completely adorned with carved birds, some 50 yrs old, some antique, woodpeckers, a golden oriole, swallows, finches. I only asked once if they were for sale which as i guessed they were not. It would be rude to persist in asking i thought, the collection had obviously taken years to acquire piecemeal and in any case it seemed obvious that to sell such things attached to the fabric of one's very home might according to ancient custom bring bad luck.

I was lucky however and noticed that one nice and old carving of swallows feeding had fallen from the trellis beam into the rockery, it was a little bit damaged. Perhaps this one could be sold i suggested and after offering a more than generous sum of money it was mine. It now sits directly above the arch way leading from the dining room into the hallway in our home, a mummy and daddy bird feeding two babies, which is quite appropriate if you know our family.

There is another younger gypsy dealer not far from Valahol whose home i have visited many times over the last decade. Typically in these houses where the extended family may live everybody has something to sell, the men do the furniture, and the women, the grandmother, the wife and even the children offer smaller items such as embriodery.

Well this family had a group of these bird carvings on the wall of their house near to the door under the car porch. It was a standard joke for me to ask everytime i visited "how much" knowing they were not for sale. Then one day, not long ago, i visited and the birds had gone. I asked his wife, who had always been a perfectly kind and polite hostess, how things were, there was no standard polite response, "no good" she said bluntly "not enough money". The next time i visited the house, six months later, there was a "For Sale" sign outside. This was at the end of a long winter, i bought the grubbiest roughest set of textile sacks i had ever seen and a model boat and wished them luck in finding some interesting pieces very soon.

There was nothing supernatural or out of the ordinary in this decline in fortune. In certain parts of Europe the gyspies are traditionally antique dealers, door knockers, and this tale must surely be being repeated in many more families right now. The fact is that when the knockers go out on their day trips in their pick ups and battered old Mercedes estates they are coming back with less and less and for some the tipping point has come.

So to my mind the jury is out. When the anthropologists or programme makers start to document a practice it’s usually an indication of a dying or dead art. Is salvage hunting still a viable practice? There remains a romance and sense of adventure to be had in buying trips for sure and I can testify to that but the pickings are getting slimmer and more often than not for many dealers a drive out becomes just that, a break from the workshop or shop routine and with little to show for the effort. To find enough good stock now requires multiple strategies, not just hunting trips but good contacts, a great eye, fresh ideas, a little bit of lateral thinking....