m a pretty stubborn and determined person." So says Anne Bell, the first Bermudian female on the Island to make the male-dominated field of antique furniture restoration her long-term profession and now a business of her own ? Anne M. Bell Antique Restoration and Conservation.

Ms Bell, 49, spent half of her adult life working in other businesses restoring wooden furniture for a wide range of clients in Bermuda, an experience that brought her both satisfaction and frustration.

"I've been in the business for 20 years and I just love it, but in the beginning as an apprentice I literally had to fight to get guys to teach me beyond polishing work," she says.

"The men laughed at me and I was constantly having to deal with male egos. They didn't want me to touch the equipment because they told me I'd hurt myself, break a nail, that kind of thing. In fact at the first place I worked at they all had bets that I wouldn't last a week ? they lost!"

As this reporter gratefully accepted tissues to deal with her streaming allergic reaction to sawdust, Ms Bell happily sat in her workshop surrounded by stripped down pieces of furniture, various tools of her trade hanging on the walls and the unmistakable aroma of Bermuda cedar. It's clear that her perseverance has paid off. She is now using her experience and expertise in her own business, located on North Shore, to provide clients with furniture restoration and conservation services that she completes entirely by hand.

"This is not a spray shop, we don't strip and dip," she says. "We do everything by hand. We hand polish all the wood for example. So when we're done the pieces don't all leave the shop looking the same colour, cedar looks like cedar, mahogany looks like it should."

She says she does not use any synthetic material in her work: "I do this the way the old people did it originally years ago. What my clients get in the end is a quality piece of furniture that's hand-restored and will appreciate and last."

She stresses quality and value to her clients, and obviously enjoys working with antiques."You can spend a small fortune on factory furniture but it doesn't last, and you lose 30-40 percent on its value as soon as you take it out the door," she says.

She built her profession up from what was initially a hobby that she took up while living in Canada, but her interest in antiques began from an early age. She was born in Bermuda but spent her formative years growing up in Jamaica, where she lived with an aunt after her mother died. Subsequently, as a teenager, she lived in Malaysia and Singapore, joining her father who had been sent there by his employer British American Insurance.

"In Malaysia we were in a town called Mallacca which had been a major stop on a trading route dating back to the 16th century," says Ms Bell. "I used to love going to the junk stores and looking through the old stuff, all the porcelain and china."

Her love of collecting antiques continued later during the ten years she lived in Canada, where in time she also took up restoration as a hobby.

"I had no idea what I was doing, I was butchering the pieces!" she laughs. "But I loved it so much that when I eventually came back to Bermuda I knew I didn't want to work in an office looking at a computer screen doing accounts receivable administration any more."

Despite reactions ranging from raised eyebrows to outright hostility, she decided to learn the restoration trade properly.

"I went to work for a highly qualified restorer as an apprentice for a year when I got back here in 1985. I started with French polishing and learning about the different aspects of individual woods," she says. "I also learned a lot from a cabinet maker and a carriage builder so that I could get the fundamentals of making pieces, in addition to getting to know about restoration. That was important ? there's a process to taking furniture apart, putting it back together and then doing the finishing."

Applying that knowledge in her own business now means that she does all the restoration work herself. "But I have part-time help from my friend Delight Goodfellow who does all the caning work on the pieces by hand," says Ms Bell.

To say that she is enjoying working for herself would be a huge understatement.

"I love being my own boss! I can do things the way I want to do them and I still love getting dirty!" she says. "You never stop learning in this field; you'd be amazed how much there is to know. And I love working with my clients; I really appreciate them sticking with me while I was setting up the business."

She says that she had a bit of a false start in terms of the initial location for her workshop ? "I moved into a poky garage at first; that didn't last!" ? but she seems to have come through the challenges of being a new business owner over the past year without losing her passion or enthusiasm for her work.

"I have a great space and clients from all walks of life, from professional decorators to collectors who have found an interesting piece that they feel is worth restoring," she says. "I'm here most days and people drop in. But it's best when they make an appointment and I go to see them in their own environment, with the piece they want restored. That's the best way for me to read people and give them exactly what they want.

"I feel good about the business and even though I'm never going to be rich it pays the bills and I intend to be doing this for quite sometime," she adds.

"In fact I'm happy doing this for as long as I have clients and the old body holds out!"