Fairs and Markets

AFTER 25 years mounting monthly fairs at Chelsea Town Hall in the King’s Road, London SW3, Hove-based Cindy Mainwaring, of Mainwaring Antiques Fairs, is introducing a new dimension.

ATTENDANCE figures of 4243 at The 9th Annual Chelsea Art Fair, a Caroline Penman event at Chelsea Old Town Hall, were slightly up on last year, as were items sold (435), with many of the 45 exhibitors reporting reasonable sales.

THE Earls Court and Olympia exhibition complexes are now under new ownership following a £245m deal which was completed last week.

THE gang targeting antiques centres in the south-midlands appear to have struck again, this time walking away with £4000 worth of carriage clocks.

A SELECT group of 22 dealers from seven countries, including a number of Maastricht veterans, will take part in Russia’s first ever international antiques fair, the Moscow World Fine Art Fair, from May 31-June 7.

THIS Sunday May 16, the second London Photograph Fair of the year will take place in Bloomsbury at the Bonnington Hotel in Southampton Row.

THIS Sunday May 16 will see, for the third time, Vintage Mayfair Frozen in Fashion being held in the Music Room of Grays Antique Market at 26 South Molton Lane, London W1, just two minutes from Bond Street tube station.

THE jewellery dealer targeted by a gang at Sandown Park Fair on April 27 has told the Antiques Trade Gazette it was the second attack on him in as little as two weeks.

A SUBSTANTIAL reward is being offered after thieves smashed a dealer’s car window and made off with a large amount of jewellery at Sandown Park Fair on April 27.

FOR some years now the country’s top glass fixture, the next bi-annual National Glass Collectors Fair will be held at the Heritage Motor Centre, near Gaydon in Warwickshire this Sunday, May 9.

ONE of the country’s oldest and most respected annual fixtures, the strictly vetted and datelined Buxton Antiques Fair, celebrates its 40th anniversary at the Pavilion Gardens of the Derbyshire spa town from May 12 to 16.

RENOWNED thriller writer Frederick Forsyth is to be the patron of this year’s Antiquarian Book Fair, which runs at London’s Olympia from June 3 to 6.

ONE of the pleasanter surprises on the fairs front last year was the immediate warm reception the trade gave to the launch of Antiques & Audacity, a new event organised by Gloucester-shire dealer Jan Hicks and staged in the grounds of Arundel Castle, West Sussex.

DESPITE the myriad complaints that there are too many fairs, still they keep coming, and here is another. From May 7 to 9 Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs launches her Oxford County Antiques Fair at Eynsham Hall, an 18th century Grade 11 listed manor house in 30 acres of parkland near Woodstock.

LAUNCHED back in 1995, Robert Bailey’s annual fair at Claridge’s has always had its own special, cosy little niche on the London fairs calendar. But would it change when this year it became The LAPADA Fine Art & Antiques Fair at Claridge’s?

POLICE are warning the trade to be on the alert after a gang stole £8000 worth of jewellery from Banbury Antique Centre on April 19.

FOLLOWING last year’s successful launch there will be a second Art Deco Fair on Sunday, May 16 at Eltham Palace in South East London.

JUST two of the 31 dealers standing at the fourth North Norfolk Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Sussex Barn, Burnham Market over Easter (April 10 to 12) did badly, and although the gate was slightly down on last year spending was definitely up.

FEW organisers are reluctant to blow their own trumpet, but Barry Phillips, who as Camfair puts together the monthly antiques fair at The Castle Hall, Hertford, admits he has been a bit too quiet about what he calls “Hertfordshire’s best-kept secret”.

BUSINESS was patchy at the 8th Pavillon des Antiquaires et des Beaux Arts that ran from March 27-April 4 in the Jardin des Tuileries, featuring 80 galleries, all but seven from France. New York’s Barry Friedman, participating for the first time, headed the small foreign contingent along with Michel Soskine Inc., showing drawings by the German-born Horst Janssen (1927-95).