Fairs and Markets

A horological story rarely makes the national news, but the announcement that Big Ben is falling silent until 2021 as major conservation work begins rang loud and clear in headlines.

The Vauxhall Art Car Boot will hit the south-east Kent coastal town of Folkestone on the opening day of the Folkestone Triennial.

Possibly the most memorable press exposure the Folkestone Triennial has had was at its first event in 2008 when Tracey Emin left a trail of bronzed baby clothes and booties across the town to highlight the numbers of teenage pregnancies across the south-east.

The great flowering of the kimono was in the Edo period (1615-1868) when the merchant and artisan classes, or chōnin, could not use their new-found wealth to improve their social status, so rigid was the shogun military hierarchy.

Two years after its last edition, the '20/21 British Art Fair' is back for its 28th staging.

Tribal Art London, the annual UK fair, seeks to raise the profile of this market in the capital.

The Giant Flea and Collectors’ Market at the Royal Bath & West Showground in Shepton Mallet is almost fully booked inside with 200 stallholders.

Thomas Del Mar, former Sotheby’s specialist and founder of the 25 Blythe Road group of auctioneers, turns fair organiser next month. The first Olympia Arms Fair takes place on September 30.

The popular annual Antiques in the Street event held in the market town of Ashbourne is being revived and will support restoration of an 18th century building.

The London Antique Arms Fair is usually a biannual event, but this year the organiser is rather busy – in November they are putting together the Passchendaele Salute 2017 at Fort Seclin near Lille, France.

So enamoured was Deco dealer Bill Jones of Style 1900 with the biannual Art Deco fairs held in the Great Hall at Eltham Palace in south London that he started his own: in Norfolk and East Sussex.

Warwick arms and armour dealer Runjeet Singh will have a representative at the new Olympia fair (see separate story) but he has a ‘fixture clash’ to cope with. The west London show coincides with his first exhibition in Asia.

Cavendish Morton became prominent as a landscape artist after the Second World War, focusing on pastoral and maritime themes, particularly in East Anglia, where he moved with his family in 1946.

The next Penman Fair takes place in Hampshire at Petersfield’s Festival Hall. Now in its 44th year, the upcoming edition of the Petersfield Antiques Fair features a focus on 20th century design, new dates and several fresh faces.

The ancient Tuscan city of Arezzo, with its Roman ruins, medieval walls, Renaissance architecture and murals by Piero della Francesca, has long been a magnet for art lovers.

A complete list of exhibitors standing at the British Antique Dealers’ Association’s (BADA) inaugural collectors’ event has been announced.

Steampunk is described in earnest tones on Wikipedia as “a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th century industrial-power machinery”.

Alex Robins of Antique Fairs Cornwall (AFC Fairs) has run her biannual two-day antiques, vintage and decorative fairs at the Royal Cornwall Showground for nine years.