Dealers

PETWORTH dealer Richard Gardner never seems to let up, but he is taking some time off to celebrate this week since the West Sussex town, with its 38 showrooms and some 75 dealers, has just won the BACA award for best antiques town/village.

NEW York City is never a shy and retiring place, but its profile will be bigger and brasher than ever from August 30 to September 2 when the Republican Party Convention takes over Madison Square Garden.

REGULAR events though they are among High Street traders great and small, cut-price sales are still relatively rare in the antiques trade. In recent years a few dealers have used this tried- and-trusted format to boost turnover in sleepy times, but sale days remain an exception.

DEALERS are, traditionally, very secretive about their restorers, whose services are probably the most vital of any to the trade, and seldom do top restorers cross over and become dealers.

ONE of the most exciting aspects of the ever-growing interest in 20th century British art is the opportunity it offers to rediscover significant, but neglected, talent of the period. For those with a keen eye and prepared to look beyond the mere ‘big’ names, there really are some impressive things out in the market place. Such works, of course, also have the added bonus, more often than not, of falling into the category of affordability.

ROBERT Bowman, one of the key players in dealer-led initiative London Sculpture Week, is launching a new venture to attract City executives into the antiques market.

FOR the second year running, dealers and auctioneers are to face each other across the football pitch rather than the saleroom in the Antiques Trade Gazette-sponsored annual challenge.

SECOND generation Mayfair antiquities dealership Charles Ede Ltd, issue four catalogues a year devoted to different areas of their speciality, and they have just published their illustrated volume listing the Etruscan and Roman Antiquities currently available at their showroom at 20 Brook Street.

A GANG slashed patrol car tyres at Petworth police station before launching an audacious burglary at an antiques shop in the town, escaping with hundreds of pieces of silver.

IN its latest published results, Partridge have recorded a significant fall in both turnover and profits citing again the very difficult trading conditions.

SINCE 1986 Christopher Gange has been a dealer in 20th Century British Art at his Katharine House Gallery at The Parade, Marlborough, Wiltshire, but for the month of July, in a new departure, he is holding an important selling exhibition of British Studio Pottery, formerly part of his private collection.

SARAH Harvey, chief executive of LAPADA, has given her backing to the concept of a marketing campaign in support of the whole antiques industry.

CELEBRATING 15 years trading in their present premises, Anne and William Morris, who operate as Ruskin Decorative Arts, have a summer selling exhibition at 5 Talbot Court, Stow-on-the-Wold from July 17 to 25.

IT is not often that an antiques dealer ends up on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery, but until September 19 that is just what is happening.

WHILE much of the art dealing world struggles to keep its galleries open, one City-based family firm is actually expanding to two London showcases.

THE considerable coverage given to Asia Week in London, on these pages and in the national press, rather neglected one gallery which was bringing the art of the Orient to London long before the Asia week promotion was thought of.

A FEW weeks ago, The Guardian published a sensible and responsible feature concerning the current malaise of the antiques trade.

DEALERS should be aware of a stolen cheque scam that targets regular Internet bankers.

THE British Antiques & Collectables Awards 2004 shortlist has been published, with the winners due to be announced at the beginning of August.

EDINBURGH dealer Andrew Fletcher, who as Twentieth Century Antiques specialises in original works from 1920-1970, normally trades via his website or by appointment, but for the duration of the Edinburgh Festival he is taking space at Concrete Butterfly, a large complex at 317-319 Cowgate in the Old Town which retails furniture and interior design.