Dealers

AS certain as Autumn’s falling leaves, the scam fair guides have come out of the woodwork once more to trap dealers in the run-up to the Winter Olympia fair.

NEXT year’s Watercolour and Drawings Fair will move to a new venue, the Royal Academy rooms at 6 Burlington Gardens, London W1, where it will run from February 3 to 6 with an opening evening preview on February 2.

BUSINESS could not be better for Simon Spero, the Kensington Church Street, London W8 18th century porcelain specialist who opened his annual exhibition on Tuesday last week (October 5) at noon.

THREE leading international dealers in antique needlework are getting together in New York later this month for a special selling exhibition – The Admirable Art of the Needle: Samplers & Embroideries 1650-1850.

SOME of the 16 shows which comprise the traditional autumn season of selling exhibitions held by the Cotswold Antiques Dealers’ Association have already been covered in this column but here are a few more to whet the appetite.

GRAHAM Smith of Graham Smith Antiques in Jesmond, Newcastle has joined LAPADA’s board of directors. He started his own business in 1999 after 27 years working with Owen Humble Antiques.

THE National Maritime Museum has purchased two prints from a London dealer following its appeal in the Antiques Trade Gazette for information about two missing William Hodges paintings.

NOW an autumn institution in Kensington, two of the London borough’s top ceramics specialists hold their concurrent annual selling exhibitions from October 5 to 16. Both have something to celebrate.

AT a time when many dealers are scaling down and reducing costs, Burford sporting antiques specialist, Manfred Schotten, is opening his new trade warehouse to coincide with his Old Sport. Here's Sport Indeed exhibition as part of the CADA autumn selling exhibition which runs from October 9-23.

RELATIVES of one of Italy’s leading 20th century glass designers have launched an assault on the trade in works using his name.

AFTER 93 years trading in the West End, celebrated English furniture dealers Stair & Company Ltd closed their doors last month.

MANHATTAN Asian art dealers William Lipton hold a selling exhibition of Chinese furniture, what they term “literati objects” and other Asian works of art at 41 East 57th Street until October 7.

MONMOUTH dealer Nick Wheatley – a specialist in Arts & Crafts, as the name of his shop Our House 1860-1925, at 6-8 St. James Street, implies – has also beeen building up for a show.

FURTHER to the footballing prowess of dealers and auctioneers (see last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette), Christie’s have announced two more sporting successes.

CHELSEA-based Paul Andrews has been a full-time dealer since 1965 and for the past 14 years has sold a wide range of antiques from 4000 square feet in the Furniture Cave in King’s Road, London SW10.

LEADING New York antiquities dealers Royal-Athena Galleries hold two concurrent selling exhibitions from October 1 to 30 at their galleries at 153 East 57th Street.

IN the past week dealers have been bombarded by letters ordering them to register and send off payments linked to anti-money laundering measures.

WITH the autumn season well underway, it’s good to see a number of dealers promoting business with selling exhibitions which, apart from anything else, present a confident looking trade to the world. Second generation West Sussex furniture dealer Frank Wilson, owner of Wilsons Antiques, has held such an exhibition in Worthing every year since the early 1990s and this autumn’s event will run from September 28 to October 2 at his showrooms at 45-47 New Broadway, Tarring Road.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE dealer Mike Golding, whose business Huntington Antiques in Stow on the Wold is known for early furniture, works of art and tapestries, has just sent out his latest catalogue of recent acquisitions, which will comprise his exhibition next month as part of the Cotswold Antique Dealers Association’s annual series of autumn selling shows.

ANTIQUES never have a low profile in Harrogate, but over the next few weeks they will dominate the North Yorkshire town with three fairs in the vicinity and the numerous antiques shops and galleries making a special effort to impress the autumn visitors, traditionally many of them antiques tourists.