"Tomorrow", says Bernard Baruch Steinitz when asked in which of the past centuries of stylistic and artistic zenith that constitute his professional speciality he would most like to live. "You don't know what is in store," explains this intense man who is saved from an apparently serious demeanour by his laughing, twinkling eyes and appealing candour. "You have to be open to possibilities."

The future seems curiously out of place in Steinitz's lexicon, for he is best known for his affinity with the glorious past. One of the top dealers in the world today, Steinitz is also one of its preeminent authorities on furniture and objects d'art of the Renaissance through to the eighteenth century, and he has a remarkable inventory of magnificent furniture and period pieces - that has made him both much admired and reviled amongst the aptly named 'Cult of the Dealer' - to prove it.

Steinitz's reputation and formidable skill spans the globe. Dealers and collectors seeking the rarest of prizes from New York to Argentina to Australia know that if it can't be located, if it can be painstakingly restored to its former glory, if it is to be had at all, Bernard Barch Steinitz will locate it.

"I remember going to Bernard Steinitz and asking for the impossible," recalls eminent Sydney dealer, Martyn Cook. "I said that I wanted a French Empire chandelier and I want it to be in perfect condition of absolutely specific dimensions. Bernard pondered for a moment and replied, 'Well, Martyn, this is difficult, but I like you so I will do it for you'. Two days later he rang and told me that he had found one. So the client and myself flew over the countryside near New York to look at it and there was this magnificent chandelier valued at approximately one quarter of a million pounds. The owners were very reluctant to sell, in fact they rejected all offers, but Bernard took me aside and assured me that we would have it. Sure enough, we did: he was fantastic.

"It is ravishing, it is a jewel - and it is in Australia now. He really is the Hercule Poirot of the trade. He will sell things from 500 dollars to countless millions of pounds. And you know the great thing about him? He buys back what he sells! That is the big thing - not many will do that. He has enormous integrity, fabulous things, of course with price tags to go with them, but, you can be sure that they will be magnificent."

Steinitz himself calls it la rencontre, his personal challenge to find a piece that has not been seen on the market for fifty years, or sometimes even two lifetimes, which is why the future figures so prominently in his philosophies of the past.

"The answer is simple," he says with frankness. " My favourite pieces are what I shall discover tomorrow morning. It is the comparison with modern love, after you have found it, you look for something else. It is a pity, but it is human nature, I'm afraid. This makes you a good hunter because you are only waiting for tomorrow."

Bernard Baruch Steinitz was born in Dijon in 1933, the son of Jewish emigres from: "No man's land between Russia and Poland - the border was always changing." His father was himself a collector of antiques and took his young son to his first auction when Bernard was thirteen. It was there that he garnered his first taste of enchantment of the past mixed with the ardent fervour of those who scrambled to possess it in the present. He had an inbuilt instinct for the 'hunt' and would travel the countryside with his father putting it to good use as they scouted for 'finds'.

'I love this country very much," he says of his passion for the antique French style, "and I started to work very hard like all immigrants do. We lost everything after the Second World War." Bernard's mother, a native of Auschwitz, Poland, was later killed there as fate would have it, during the Nazi regime.

"Afterwards, I decided to make a new house, to upgrade the collections of my parents - the Germans had taken everything - and very quickly I found that we could buy from one dealer and sell to another. It was almost a modern stockmarket philosophy! If you could do this, why not? It was a time of opportunity. Now things of course have become much more difficult, everybody knows what everyone else has, all the records of prices and sales are published everywhere - the mood, the fashion has permeated the market and many investors lay their money down for quick profit, and more and more I find that people do not want to sell because it is the best investment that anyone could dream of!"

With nothing but his instinct and self-motivated apprenticeship as training, Bernard took himself to Paris, and became what might be termed a 'runner' for several of the city's more prominent dealers. For fifteen years, he would continue to amaze his elder, more experienced peers with the rarity and frequency of his finds. Supplementing his practical skills and instincts, that ambitious young apprentice began to cement his academic knowledge through a comprehensive library of books, a method of education to which he still solemnly subscribes.

"Well, when you start anything, you start without knowledge and I am very humble in the matters of knowledge because I am still studying every day of my life improving my understanding. It is written in the Bible, you know, that the more that you discover, the more you know nothing and this is precisely why I have only made myself in the last ten years, a man of good professional knowledge. Not simply having the capacity to store certain things but to have a view about the international spectrum of art from all countries and many periods. With such a knowledge I can supervise all the sales on all the provenances in North and South America, Italy, England and everywhere and people know my name and they call me now for this, too."

With what knowledge he had then, and more than an element of 'totem', a special wisdom in his ability to search out and restore rarities, Steinitz confounded the norm, and opted to open his own premises. His rise in the dealing world has since been meteoric and he has become recognised as one of France's greatest antiquarians. It is fine to attribute an inherent talent simply to instinct, but how does he explain his seemingly effortless ability to locate his much-lauded prizes? According to Bernard, the answer lies in the legacy of Jewish tradition, and although at once frustratingly imprecise to those not possessed of a Polish-Jewish grandfather, some writers, fortunately are.

"First of all I am a medium," says Bernard with smiling conviction. "My Polish grandfather was a Hassidic Jew - a learned man in the Talmud. He had a lot of knowledge not only about books but about human nature. I will tell you a story that happened to me many, many years ago when I was just married to my wife. We were very young and I had no money and we needed to make some quickly. I was on a country road near Bordeaux, near the wine regions and I suddenly said to my wife, 'I smell money," he says laughing and sniffed the air.

"There were some old soldiers barracks nearby and I said to my wife that we should stop and explore them because I felt that there was something there. There were people in France at this time selling the old cars for scrap metal. I felt that I should go and see a particular man who was doing this because you never know what you can find in old cars! He stored all the pieces of scrap metal in these barracks so I looked through two or three and I found nothing. Then in the fourth barrack that contained pieces of brass, I found an old cup with painting and engraving on the sides - a little bit smashed but still recognisable.

"I said to my wife, 'Look! I was not joking!' The cup was solid gold from the eighteenth century with all the painting inside - then people were often so wealthy that they would use the cup a couple of times and then throw it away like brass. I was able to live on the proceeds of that cup for two years! It was something that I cannot explain that took me off the main road and led me to this cup. I believe that this happens because I am working to my best and fullest each day, but apart from that, it cannot really be explained.

Times have of course changed substantially, and financially. Home now for Bernard, his wife Simone and some of his five children is in Boulogne, just outside of Paris. Built in 1750 and surrounded by a beautiful garden, the house was constructed to serve as the amorous retreat for Napoleon and Maria Waleska. Then there is the family's magnificent castle above the Loire, Chateau de Cornillon, a restored 11th century fortress that rises like a craggy phoenix from the side of a rocky outcrop far above the river below. It, like the Boulogne house is filled with Bernard's beloved pieces. A French octagonal mirror, circa 1650 here, a Louis XIII boiserie there, 17th century bronze figurines clusted on a Flemish cabinet from the same era six Louis XIV's armchairs to recline in by the Steinitz's roaring fireplace.

The Steinitz family live amongst this glorious inventory quite informally, treating the pieces not as untouchable icons, but utilising them in the way that they were intended, with functionality and informality.

"Well when you start anything, you start without knowledge and I am very humble in the matters of knowledge because I am still studying each day of my life improving my understanding. It is written in the Bible, you know, that the more that you discover, the more you know."

Similarly, Steinitz recreates time in his professional capacity in faithful, opulent displays that mark his exhibitions. Total conceptual tableaux reproduced to extraordinary lengths, highlighting a particular period piece or pieces to the finest detail at forums such as the Winter Antiques Show. The effect serves to transport the viewer to another time and place, evoking a modicum of the original experience and establishing an affinity with the past.

The daily routine of the dealer is delineated by international auctions and well-travelled plane routes from continent to continent, and Bernard Steinitz is no different in that he will attend a Christie's auction in New York and be home in Paris aboard the Concorde in twenty-four hours. But it is in his beloved workrooms that he is most content, surrounded by the pantheon of artistic design and beautifully executed craftsmanship that mark the periods of his obsession. He is like a preux chevalier to the restoration of fine antiquities, savouring the returning of the piece but relishing the prospect of returning it through months of painstaking work to its former glory.

"I am from the old school: I love poetry and art, aestheticism ... and all my life I have fought to have what I do now. I have never seen a more beautiful workshop, have you?" he inquires quite rhetorically, surveying his surrounds. "have you seen my courtyard...?"

"What I love most in my professional life is my workshop, and what I want to teach the young people in my employ - even though they are very good at what they do - I want them to treat art as I did when I was their age. The first thing one must learn if one is going to restore properly is to love. And love means utmost respect."

The ravages of time and human behaviour take their toll on beauty of all descriptions, priceless furniture suffers similarly and Bernard Steinitz is passionately committed to their rebirth.

"I supervise everything for myself and my clients. Many times you may go to an art gallery or a restoration place and they do not show you the workrooms at the back because often the people who run them take better care of their cars than they do their art pieces." he says with a tone of disgust before pointing to a pair of stands. "I found these in the ruins of a castle that was bombed in the last war. They are Louis XIV period and we shall restore them completely so that they will be able to serve their purpose again." Next to these are a pair of Louis XIV sconces that have suffered a similiar fate. "I have bought all of these in the last two weeks," he says with some pleasure. Sometimes I receive the items completely dismantled, in chaotic order then it is our task to put them together.

"This English Chippendale piece is an exceptional example of the style and I have sold it to a very important English dealer. I shall do the restorations in his workshops because English gilding has nothing whatever to do with the French way" He stops by the work table of a young girl, one of his meticulous artisans. She is restoring an English mirror with exacting detail - everything from the most intricate handiwork to replacing large missing chunks. "We shall keep the original patina but she is faithful to the authentic methods of restoration", informs Steinitz. "Each of the small flowers that are missing from the frame will be replaced in keeping with the original eighteenth century tradition. Nothing is done in plaster or stucco, everything is done absolutely the way that it should be.

She will use the same poplar because it is soft and dry and the best wood to absorb the patina of the painting. Another wood like oak will not take the painting and after a few years it will crack.

"I am very proud of my workshop because it is one of the last remaining ones that can repair with exactly the same craftsmanship as the seventeenth century bouillework," continues Bernard proudly.

Steinitz is empassioned by his work simply and totally. He is happiest and most exuberant as he escorts his visitor through his beloved workrooms, enthusiastically punctuating the air with descriptions of the work being undertaken, talking with his craftsmen and shouting instructions in rapid-fire French and stopping at intervals when a particular piece catches his eye.

"We will repair the top of this very expensive Louis XIV desk made of metal brass and red tortoise shell. The support of the bouillework is oak and after two hundred years all the original glue falls apart. We do not repair like 98% of the dealers just sticking it together with whatever they have because after six months to a year it will fall apart again. We start from the construction and after we have placed new firmament in the foundations, we will replace everything piece by piece just like it was..."

He traipses through the periods of artistic splendour, speaking with the eye of both social and an artistic historian. He speaks authoritatively but with intimacy as he lets the listener into his confidences often making asides with verbal parentheses in the exuberant, enthusiastic style of an academic storyteller. His beloved furniture becomes real and relevant - as one learns not just about the craftsmanship of a superbly produced period chair, but who probably sat on it.

"Each twenty years during the periods, one man became the master," he says. "He would give to the others the trends, drawings, of the new fashion."

French is understandably his favourite and he waxes lyrical accordingly. "Out of all the periods all around the world, nothing can be compared to the French quality, classical with very strict rules of production, expertise, style and certain sense of equilibrium, harmony."

But it is the eighteenth century that really piques his passions - the sheer monumentality of 18th century design.

"History always repeats itself and it is always the same story. France during the Renaissance was the superpower of the world. After the renaissance, Louis XIV, the Sun King was in reality the King of Europe. France was the centre - it had the most inhabitants. The artisans gave to the King the exact reflection of what he was, the Sun King. What is the sun? It not only gives light, it gives warmth and it is the centre of everybody's attention. And at this time even Europe's small kingdoms, even the Bourgeoisie were looking to Paris. Nothing was good if it did not come from Paris. That means that the rich from all over Europe paid Parisian masters to come to Germany, Poland, Russia, everywhere... The French were not just masters in art, they were very big in literature, in letters. The intelligensia were very strong, always and this made the French way the mode de vie in the 18th century. It was the country of light - of intellectual life, artistic life and also fashion.

"The best workers in the second part of the eighteenth came from Germany. But when they were working alone in Germany they did good things but without that sense of perfection. Only in Paris did they receive the gift of technological knowledge but with the sense of harmony. It was very strange, really. This only came from Paris.

"In Italy, they had fantastic imagination, but the production was mostly very poor, technically speaking. They had no rules - they are mainly decoration pieces, even though they have a fabulous art sense."

The permanence and pervasiveness of the French style fascinates Steinitz and he recounts the centuries of the country's artistic superiority with an exuberant near-patriotic fervour.
"What delineated the French artistic style was perhaps governed by the fact that it was a very old country with rules of 'heritage selection'" he continues. "If you were not a member of a big file, you could not penetrate the guilds - you needed to be the son of someone with a name to be admitted. This created a certain type of credibility. It was very much against the free spirit of liberalism but it served to make the school of artistic discipline much better. It created a status quo. Not like America is today, for example you can be a taxi driver today and in two years you will be a banker.

"Rococco was a reaction after the Sun King. Everybody had a lot of money but they began to tire of the might of France. They were geared towards the element of comfort. The woman who was concerned about fashion enjoyed the floral work on cups, more feminine styles. This was the advent of Rococco after Louis XIV. "After that, and in reaction to the exaggeration of Rococco, people with taste decided that they needed to go back to classicism and they became more straight in line, removed much of the bronze and we come to Louis XVI. None of the periods are worth more than the other per se today, value is determined on the quality of each individual piece irrespective of the period.

He shows four chairs signed by Sene, "the best maker of chairs in the eighteenth century from the eighteenth century!" he declares. "The craftsmen were also terribly intelligent. If you look at each tiny detail, as we do through a magnifying glass - you will see that everything was executed with perfection - often taking ten years to make one piece for the courts! The assemblage of this piece is entirely mathematical; much like putting together the mechanisms of a watch. This is done with the same precision and perfection. We remove the patina very carefully to see what the state of conservation is like underneath. And we do this level by level to see what is original.

"In these days, the craftsmen were drawn from the courts of the kings and they were not concerned with cost: 'Just do it!' was the directive. Sometimes they did not even pay the artisans, it was felt that it was a privilege to be associated with the king. Many famous artists were bankrupt because the king, or the mistress of the king never paid the Master - just small change!"

Many of Steinitz's beloved pieces are returned to museums to be preserved as historical pieces in their own right. The Getty Museum, Versailles and the Metropolitan Museum of Art where in conjunction with legendary Metropolitan antiques, benefactress, Jayne Wrightsman, Steinitz coordinated the acclaimed Louise XIV exhibition, have all purchased treasure unearthed by the diminutive Frenchman.

"The most important aspect of my professional work is that the communications must be personal. You cannot delegate responsibility so much because you need your knowledge, your sensibility, your own eyes and your ears, we must be constantly at the disposal of people that call you.

"My first buyer is always myself. If I don't like the piece, I don't care, I will not purchase it. If not, you cannot give it to the same attention. Can you image me giving a piece to my craftsmen in my beloved workrooms that I did not care for? Never. It is very important for people to understand that we work here like they did in the eighteenth century. We have only very young people and only lovers of this art can keep it going.

"Many clients - all of them in fact - they hate to speak about money, that is not the criteria of their purchases. They play with art - they don't play with money, they have plenty of that. If you speak of art in terms of money you have lost the art game already! I don't know what the most important piece of art I have sold is, because sometimes the most important is not the most expensive again, if it is very rare, no-one knows."

Money may not indeed be the issue: "Value is ultimately subjective," he dismisses the notion with a wave of the hand. "This is the most illogical of trades". The thrill of the chase, the moment of recognition when his palms begin to sweat as he happens upon a previously unidentified rarity... this is what continues to propel him.

"The best discoveries are the ones that you pay little money for! What is really costly, very expensive, is not necessarily the item that gives you the most pleasure. What is very exciting, are the pieces that are very rare - items that just because you have the money, you cannot buy. Because these pieces are rare, most often people do not know of them, they are not on the market. The best discovery I made was in front of two thousand people for nothing," he says rather cryptically.

"It is like the piece belongs to you, you are the unique eyes that found it. After you have bought these pieces, you can treat them as they would have been treated in the eighteenth century. If I speak about very extraordinary pieces, well, I found and subsequently sold to the Getty museum one of the unique vestiges remaining of some Louis XIV furniture before he had built Versailles. Before he had started Versailles, he built a small castle named Trianon de Porcelain, so called because the fashion of the time was Chinese blue and white porcelain. These were such astonishing things to find. He had built his own castle only with blue and white materials. Everything inside was blue and white. So, I once discovered a very small blue on white ivory table - I cannot tell you where - after many discussions with Gillian Russell of the Getty, she made the decision to buy the table because I was sure about the quality of the table. I knew how unique it was but I had to convince her of this knowledge too. She later discovered in the archives that it was a Louis XIV table made before Versailles.

"Then there is a new piece that I recently sold to them. A fantastic screen in natural wood, so beautifully intact that it was described in the Monto Carlo auctions as a 19th century copy. I bought it for five hundred dollars in front of five thousand people. I sold it later to the Getty for $80,000. It is not luck, it is purely knowledge - a dialogue between myself and the object, only for me."

Steinitz will walk in and buy an entire collection for ten million dollars after having been in the place for five minutes - one hundred items in total perhaps," says Martyn Cook of the frequently observed purchasing method often favoured by Steinitz. "The greatest collections in the world come from people like him."

What may appear to be financial suicide to the uneducated is to Steinitz merely an active confirmation of the authenticity of his source, such is the rarified air which he and his clients breathe.

"I prefer to buy right from the source. Which means to say that I prefer to by the entire contents of a castle for instance, not just several pieces. Sometimes I even need to buy the castle with the contents! And when I buy a complete estate of course there are paintings inside, which is why I am also involved in the restoration of artworks as well as furniture pieces. Often in these paintings, the varnish is completedly tatty, but underneath you have the magnificient original and if you have a good restorer, the results will be spectacular. You can save a piece of art and this is very inspiring. Often I make wonderful discoveries, as you could imagine!

"I am over seventy years old now, but I was always dreaming, building my career to give my sons, like they do in all Jewish families," he says wryly. "But I discovered that that is stupid, they must do what they want themselves. What I give to them is the framework." With centuries of artistic perfection as a barometer, that is a formidable blue print indeed.