With a longstanding passion for the finest of English period furniture, New Yorker Bernard Karr turned a personal love into a most successful international business of a quarter of a century's standing.

Consider a compulsive personality; combine this with a passion of some twenty-five years standing for period English antiques, and you may begin to have an understanding of Bernard Karr, the man behind Hyde Park Antiques, New York City. Born and bred in the Big Apple, Karr applied his talents to a string of vocations prior to the eventual opening of his internationally renowned Manhattan showroom. Located at 836 Broadway, Hyde Park Antiques has specialised in fine English 18th and early 19th century furniture since the Sixties.

By virtue of a long ensconcement at Columbia University where Karr studied for a Masters Degree, countless opportunities arose to dabble in many fields that proved irresistible. "My B.A. took thirty-two semesters - it normally takes eight", he muses. Although travel accounted for much of his early pre-occupation, this laconic American's previous range of work experience, cannot be ignored. Ranging from breakfast chef at a large hotel, waiter and Maitre D', to teacher and auto repairs, the road to eminent antique dealer was certainly a diverse one.

Karr's entree into the antique business was largely inevitable. An early dedicated buyer of fine furnishings, his passion found him in an enviable predicament in the Sixties. Karr was happily furnishing entire apartments when his love of purchasing everything from English, French, Continental and American furniture to crystal, porcelain and carpets, led to the opening of a small store. "I had more than I could possibly live with in my own apartment", he recalls, "so I opened a small shop nearby to where I was working at the time. I thought to sell the excess in the evenings and Saturdays would be great fun!"