Fairs and Markets

AS usual, the London Photograph Fair is fully booked for the event this Sunday (September 12) at the Bonnington Hotel in London’s Bloomsbury, WC2.

FOUNDED in 1950, and still one of the capital’s most familiar antiques events, The Chelsea Antiques Fair has marked the beginning of the autumn anti-ques season for decades, as it will again when from September 17 to 26 it runs at its usual venue, Chelsea Old Town Hall in the King’s Road, London SW3.

HERTFORDSHIRE organiser Paul Bishop, who founded Oxbridge Fairs to mount specialist glass events, holds his fourth Cambridge Glass Fair at Chilford Hall Vineyard, Linton, Cambridgeshire this Sunday (September 12) and, with 100 tables, it is fully booked.

INNOVATIVE Oxfordshire dealers The Country Seat may be best known as furniture specialists, but they are increasingly turning their focus towards 19th and 20th century design.

ANDREW Morris is to be the new chief executive of Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre Group, taking over from Barry Cleverdon who retires next year.

ARGUABLY the most popular of the five events a year held by Towy Antiques Fairs at the United Counties Showground, Carmarthen is the September staging. The approaching event on the weekend of September 11 and 12 has been fully booked with its full complement of 180 exhibitors since early in the year.

BUSINESS proved agonisingly slow for many of the exhibitors at Antiques For Everyone - Earls Court Two, held in West London from August 19 to 22. Apparently, there were sales on the opening day but by the third afternoon there was much talk in the hall that this event would not be held next year.

THE owners of Chicago’s Navy Pier have contracted Pfingsten Publishing to produce a new annual art and antiques event replacing two major fairs at the Windy City’s top venue.

TIMES may be tough at fairs, but that does not stop organisers launching new ones, nor dealers giving them a go.

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.

SHAME on veteran organiser Cindy Mainwaring for mentioning the ‘C’ word when the summer is barely out.

AFTER four years of organising fairs at the Bournemouth Pavilion, the Hampshire-based organisers Valerie and Ken Sleeney, believe the wealthy town and hinterland has more to offer.

CONGRATULATIONS to Middlesex-based organiser Sue Cruttenden who this month celebrates 25 years of her fortnightly Sunbury Antiques Market at Kempton Park Race Course, Sunbury-on-Thames.

LAPADA have abandoned Claridge’s as the venue for their London fair but plans for the launch of their LAPADA Autumn Antiques & Fine Art Fair are well advanced and well received by members of our largest trade association.

MEANWHILE, that well-known and popular organiser Reg Cooper, who knows as much about the vicissitudes of the business as most, is returning confidently to the fray with a new venture.

HOME Counties organisers Jill Napper and Joy O’Meara, who operate as Jay Fairs, have just acquired the long-established Benson Antiques & Collectors Fair, held in the Parish Hall at Benson, Oxfordshire. They will run the fair from September 19 and on the third Sunday of each month thereafter. It will be AA signposted.

DEFINITELY in the running for the accolade of busiest organiser is Harrogate-based Galloway Antiques Fairs who make one of their many annual forays North of the Border from September 10 to 12 for the Blair Castle Antiques Fair at Blair Atholl near Pitlochry in Perthshire.

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.

HAVING reported on trade expansion, it is equally encouraging to see seasoned organisers such as Robert Bailey and Caroline Penman in a similarly upbeat mood.

NOBODY is pretending that this year has all been sunshine and brightness for the trade, but nor has it been quite as terminally doom-laden as some commentators would suggest.