Joan Price makes decisions in a hurry. Like other highly successful businesspeople, she has to. So, standing before a pair of framed 18th-century Chinese wallpaper panels at the International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show, Price quickly decides she wants them and is ready to make the purchase—that is, until her antiques consultant intervenes. “Let’s keep looking,” says Tim Corfield, with a gentle nudge. “They’re a bit ‘flat.’”

A life-long lover of art and antiques, it only recently that Price, the CEO of a Manhattan real estate

"Our job is also to protect the client," says design consultant Cristina Grajales. "Before I propose a piece to a client, I've done a lot of vetting."

and investment company, decided she was ready to begin collecting in a more serious fashion. “I had acquired a lot of pieces, but they didn’t match—especially in the new space I was in,” she says. “I was lacking the education and the confidence.”

Through a private international concierge club called Quintessentially, Price discovered Corfield and his British/American antiques advisory service, Corfield Morris. Formed by Corfield, an antiques dealer and restorer, and Daniel Morris, a former Sotheby’s director and expert in 18th- and 19th-century furniture, the consultancy boasts a sizable American client list thanks to its increasingly ubiquitous presence at international fairs. Along with Martyn Downer, the former head of Sotheby’s jewelry department, and Tanya Buckrell-Pos, a 20th-century specialist, Corfield Morris has the collecting field covered.

Price is typical of the new breed of collector who hires consultants: someone who has crossed a mental threshold and is ready to the move to the next level, where the quality level and the prices are higher. For this type of buyer, expert advice on decorating and furnishing homes is also at a premium.

“I try to get the personality of the client in my head,” says Corfield, a 15-year veteran consultant who visited Price’s apartment while in New York and went out shopping with her to see what kinds of pieces she liked. He soon discovered that her mental hurdle was the idea of living with 18th-century English antiques in her new industrial loft. “He took me to a gallery with a similar setting—Tony Ingrao—which I thought was very sensitive of him,” explains Price. “Then I began to get excited.”

Back at the International Show, a set of six late 18th-century Chinese enamels on copper depicting a bucolic country narrative caught Price’s eye after she passed on the framed wallpaper panels. She watched how everyone who visited Jeremy Ltd.’s booth on this first day of the fair was drawn to them. “Tim turned to me and said, ‘You don’t have to buy them.’ He was slowing me down. But I asked him to negotiate a price for me. Without Tim I wouldn’t have made the conceptual leap to buy something of that quality.”

Consultants are generally knowledgeable pros—former museum curators, auction-house specialists and dealers—who have decided to launch their own advisory services. While no official accreditation exists for what they do, they tend to be well-known in their fields, and with a little digging, a prospective client can easily research their backgrounds. Some high-end consultants work with only a couple of clients, since developing a museum-quality collection can be a full-time job. These experts might be kept on a yearly salary or monthly retainer. Others are far more accessible and are happy to work on a project basis or even negotiate just one purchase for a buyer. Commissions range from 2 percent on multimillion-dollar painting sales to 20 percent on say, a $5,000 antique table.