Fairs and Markets

ANTIQUES fairs currently allowed to operate without planning permission may continue to do so after the Government announced that there would be no change in the law after all.

TATTON Park in Cheshire is the National Trust’s most visited property, but not only is it the country’s favourite, it is also a big favourite of Essex organiser Robert Bailey who holds four Tatton fairs a year.

PLANS are well advanced for what looks set to become the major antiques fair of Belfast and, if the pre-launch activity is anything to judge by, Antiques and Arts International will be a contender for Ireland’s top fair.

ALTHOUGH since its inception 16 years ago the August Antiques For Everyone fair at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre has been overtaken in terms of business by its spring and autumn counterparts, this summer’s staging from August 8 to 11 proved the most lively NEC fair for some time.

FOR the third year running, Birmingham-based fairs director Fran Foster stages Antiques For Everyone – Scotland and she hopes that from August 23 to 25 the exhibitors – more than 100 dealers at Glasgow’s Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre – build on the considerable success of the first two.

IF YOU want to brush up your knowledge of contemporary interior decoration or check out the movers and shakers in today’s design world, then make sure you take in 100% Design at Earls Court Two next month.

AFTER spending much of the summer in London trying to woo British dealers over to his Fall Fair in New York, it was back in America that more recently organiser David Lester achieved his biggest coup so far in launching this new event.

INDISPUTABLY Maryland’s top antique event, and arguably one of America’s top antiques attractions, the 22nd annual Baltimore Summer Antiques Fair runs from August 23 to 25.

AUSTRALIA: RATHER farther to go for an August fair, but no doubt a journey well rewarded is the Australian Antique Dealers Association’s own Antiques and Fine Art Fair.

THEY had to meet sometime and it was a colourful clash when the two TV stars, interior designer Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen and dealer/presenter David Dickinson, chanced upon each other at the Ardingly International Antiques and Collectors Fair at the South of England Showground on July 16 and 17.

AFTER a literary foray into the art world with her latest blockbuster Pandora, popular novelist Jilly Cooper will get a taste of the real thing on September 18 when she opens London’s 20/21 British Art Fair.

Great Grooms Antiques Centre at Parbrook, Billingshurst has closed due to the loss of trade since the opening of a bypass two years ago.

TOULON-based, but owned by Britain’s dmg, the Societé Française d’organisation have acquired the Cagnes-sur-Mer Antiques Fair which will be held next in the famous Hippodrome of the town in South-West France from September 12 to 16.

USA: California-based show organisers Caskey-Lees will manage the first annual show for the Art and Antique Dealers League of America at the Gramercy Park Armory, New York on November 22-24.

USA: ONE OF America’s best known antique and collectors’ fairs, the Atlantique City show in New Jersey, will soon be under new ownership following the sale of Krause Publications, specialist collecting and hobby publishers based in Iola, Wisconsin to F &W Publications of Cincinnati.

USA: THE second annual Cleveland Summer Antiques Show returns to Cleveland State University Convocation Center from August 2 to 4 with more than 150 dealers from across the US and Canada.

EVER-resilient Essex organiser Robert Bailey is back on the acquisitions trail, if in a modest way. He has just taken over fellow Essex organiser Patricia Cox’s twice-yearly Tattersalls fairs at Newmarket, Suffolk and will run the next fixture from September 13 to 15.

A HARD act to follow will be Elizabeth Fell who after seven years running the whole show is leaving The Swan at Tetsworth, one of our most successful and innovative antiques centres.

FIVE of the six dealers who have left Chelsea antiques centre Bourbon-Hanby are consulting lawyers over whether their leases have been honoured.

JUST as the Office of Fair Trading seemed to be making progress over the misleading marketing tactics of the Barcelona-based European City Guide, another similar operation has struck again.