About

Manfred Schotten Antiques has been established for over 40 years, specialising in antique sporting items, along with a wide selection of equestrian artwork, taxidermy, club, leather and library furniture, games and accessories. In the last few years we have been following another passion – classic and vintage motor cycles, which we added to our stock.

Originally from Bavaria, I started coming to England in the early 1970’s to buy antique furniture, shipping it back to Germany and selling these in my brother’s shop. I found the Cotswolds such a charming place, and noticed that this area had become a great hunting ground for continental and overseas Antiques dealers. My wife and I decided to settle here, quickly finding a warehouse/workshop in Longborough only a few miles from Stow on the Wold. In 1979 we moved to our present premises in the medieval town of Burford, often referred to as the gateway to the Cotswolds.

I grew up skiing in Bavaria, started to play golf, was taken fly-fishing by friends and started noticing sporting antiques and memorabilia. This is when it really started. My wife Gabi ran the shop whilst I was out buying more and more sporting antiques and art which we sold in the shop and also at the famous Portobello Road on a Saturday morning. The sporting theme took over and attracted collectors and buyers from the fashion industry such as Ralph Lauren, Hennes & Mauritz, Gant, Uli Knecht and many more.

We became members, first of the CADA and later LAPADA and CINOA, the latter being two of the world’s best-known trade associations. We gained widespread publicity and continued to grow our clientele in the shop and later online with customers from all over the world. Collectors, Interior Decorators and Museums are valued clients.

A further service on offer is interior design where we find and help place unique items for any project, being a home, hotel, club or man cave. Some of the sports we cover are Golf, Fishing, Cricket, Tennis and other Racket Sports, Croquet, Snooker and Billiards, Boxing, Football, Rugby, Rowing, Curling, Skiing, Hunting, Polo, Shooting, Racing, Motoring and more.

We are a team of three - the third member being Stephen Clarke, who has been working with us in the business for over 30 years. Our aim has always been and will be to have one of the most interesting shops in the UK with a friendly and professional service.

Some quotes from the press…

  • “If sport rather than food is a passion, you will score points by choosing a present at Manfred Schotten Antiques, Burford. Vintage equipment and decorative items relating to tennis, golf, football, rugby, cricket, lacrosse and croquet are included. The shop is bursting at the seams with bronzes of champion golfers, sporting prints, well mellowed rackets and bats, decoy ducks and lustrous leather footwear”
  •  - Huan Mallalieu – Country Life 
  • “Schotten is Britain’s premier dealer and one of the country’s most notable authorities on English sporting antiques. Here valuable golfing artefacts sit comfortably amongst the club furniture, hunting prints, ancient wooden tennis racquets and autographed cricket bats.”
  • - Adam Edwards – How To Spend It magazine, FT.
  • “Best shop for sporting antiques”
  • - BBC Homes & Antiques Magazine
  • “Schotten has four rooms full to the brim with such memorabilia, freeze-framing more than a hundred years of British sporting achievement”
  • - World of Interiors
  • “While some antiques dealers might dabble in recreational odds and ends, Schotten is the rare store that specializes in them”
  • – Mens Vogue