Fairs and Markets

The 23rd Winter Fine Art & Antiques Fair opened at Olympia in West London last week and as usual trade associations the BADA and LAPADA presented their respective best stand awards to exhibiting members.

Frieze Week, London’s annual contemporary art circus, means big business.

The Palm Beach Show Group have acquired the ‘Antiques, Art & Design at the Armory Show,’ known as the ‘Avenue Show’, from Manhattan Media.

This week is Frieze Week in London, a flurry of fairs, exhibitions and sales including the opening of the Contemporary art giant Frieze London.

Some of the group of youthful dealers who make up ‘Young Guns of the Antiques Trade’ have clubbed together to exhibit in their own pavilion at the ‘Antiques for Everyone’ fair next at the NEC, Birmingham from October 31 to November 3.

Three fraudsters have been sentenced for a widespread scam using dud cheques at antiques fairs across the country.

Before the opening of Masterpiece London, London dealers Apter-Fredericks pledged to donate £1000 to the military charity Walking With the Wounded if they sold a pair of 19th century English cannons at the fair.

Nelson Events and IACF have announced that they will start charging reduced rate VAT on stands at their fairs from October 1. In a letter to ATG this week, they explain why they have been forced into this move, albeit reluctantly.

Around 5000 people will be streaming through the gates from seven in the morning this bank holiday Monday, August 26, for B2B Events’ hectic flea and collectors’ fair at the Three Counties Showground in Worcestershire.

Fair organisers IACF say they may be forced to charge dealers VAT on stalls this year – even as they launch a legal appeal against new Revenue rules demanding the levy.

As single disciplines go, English clocks are among the London summer fairs’ strongest suits.

An antiques and collectors’ street market in one of the UK’s wealthiest cities has expanded from just 15 stalls to 80 in three years and is still growing.

Mike Collins is to build on his success running Bermondsey Antiques Market by trialling a night antiques market during the summer.

Olympia organisers Clarion Events have issued a warning to exhibitors after they were targeted by another of the scam guides so often reported on these pages.

Woburn Antiques Centre, at the heart of the Woburn Abbey Estate in Bedfordshire, is to close on September 1.

‘Frieze Masters’ has acquired further gravitas following its successful launch last year by signing up several new heavyweight exhibitors for the 2013 event from October 17-20 in London’s Regent’s Park.

Since ‘The Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair’ was forced to close after 75 years in 2009, the ‘Olympia International Art & Antiques Fair’ has taken up the mantle of the grande dame of London’s summer fairs.

Are the costs of running a gallery still necessary in the face of technology and a changing market? That will be the subject up for debate on Monday, June 10, at the Summer Olympia fair.

The rising stars and the long-established businesses of the antiques trade were both recognised at a double awards ceremony hosted by the Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair in Battersea last week

‘Masterpiece London’ has announced a link with Hong Kong’s ‘Fine Art Asia’ this year, with the incorporation of a Hong Kong Pavilion at the fourth edition of the London fair from June 26-July 3.