Fairs and Markets

The Times recently ran a feature on seven of the most atmospheric towns in the UK in which to do your Christmas shopping for one-off gifts, maybe combining this joysome activity with a weekend break. Here are some art and antiques options in two of them, Ludlow in Shropshire and Frome in Somerset.

One of the dealers taking part in the inaugural Classic Antique Fairs staging at Birmingham’s NEC has gone on television to promote the show.

Mother-and-daughter team start new event in Ireland with hopes for several others across the island

Among the highlight sales reported at the Art & Antiques Fair Olympia was a Japanese bronze of a carp.

The Vintage and Very Nice Market is held monthly in the pleasant surroundings of the 18th century Assembly Rooms in Chichester.

To help raise funds for a flood appeal at the West Midlands Showground in Shrewsbury, local fair organisers Emma and Oli Jones, aka JOS Events held a special ‘yard’ sale there earlier this month.

Dealers hail return to Midlands venue a year after closure of popular Antiques for Everyone events

Running in Chichester on December 3 is Grandma’s Attic Fairs’ antiques and vintage fair at the Westgate Leisure Centre.

Valerie Jackson-Harris is stepping down as chair of The Ephemera Society, a position she has held since 2008.

Owners of a rapidly expanding chain of shops turn their attention to opening a saleroom in Somerset town

A first edition, first impression presentation of WB Yeats’ first book, Mosada (1886), was among the standout sales at the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair.

When he launched his midweek antiques fair in the Northumberland market town of Hexham in 1991, Colin Caygill told the manager of the Wentworth Leisure Centre where it was held that “he would give it a go for three or four months”.

The second instalment of FAB Paris, the fair resulting from the merger of Fine Arts Paris and La Biennale, will be staged this November but for the first time it moves from its previous home at the Carrousel du Louvre.

Exhibitors have reported excellent results at Frieze Masters, confirming the event’s status as the UK’s top high-end art and antiques fair.

Several personal items grace The Pavilions of Harrogate Decorative Antiques & Fine Art Fair, Cooper Events’ final outing of the year and its third to that venue.

Eleventh edition of the London event now widened in scope includes an impressive array of big results

Two popular fairs are running in November and December in the Suffolk village of Long Melford which also offers three antiques businesses as an extra draw for buyers to part with their cash in a pre-Christmas splash.

In November 1915, Captain Wilton John Rix of the 6th Bedfordshire Regiment wrote from France to the East Suffolk Gazette with an understated and moving plea for a relief from the war’s monotony.