Dealers

BACK in London, Chris Beetles of Ryder Street in St James’s has just opened his amusing annual show of cat pictures, which, as always, features an important group of works by the world’s most famous exponent of the genre, Louis Wain (1860-1939).

UNDER the name Art Nouveau Originals, specialist dealer Cathy Turner is a very well-known figure on the fairs circuit, but she will now be even better known since she has just purchased The Bindery Gallery at 69 High Street, Broadway, Worcestershire (Tel: 01386 854645).

HIGH-profile dealers Reindeer Antiques, who have a shop in Kensington Church Street, London W8 and a large complex in Northamptonshire, are to convert part of the latter into the Reindeer Antiques Centre.

HOW many dealers, I wonder, dread, rather than dream of, their business area being “discovered”? Long before Covent Garden became a trendy mecca for international tourists, one of the familiar attractions for habitués was London dealer Arthur Middleton’s distinctive shop in New Row, full of early globes and all sorts of antique scientific instruments.

TWO Dulwich ladies have successfully tapped into the trend towards 20th century design and on Sunday September 19 hold their third Midcentury Modern event at the 1960s Christisson-designed refectory at the famous local public school Dulwich College, on Dulwich Common, London SE21.

SIX masked raiders broke into the South Cotswolds Antiques Fair at Westonbirt School, near Tetbury in Gloucestershire around 3am on the morning of Sunday August 15 and escaped with an estimated £400,000 worth of jewellery.

WEST Kent dealers Julian and Candy Lovegrove of Rose and Crown Antiques at West Malling, are also expanding and hope to pick up business in East Kent.

NEWARK antiques centre Trade Space have announced that they have ceased trading and have no assets to pay off debts.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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