Fairs and Markets

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

WITH a turnover last year in excess of £5 million, Vectis, who are based in Stockton-on-Tees, are well known as the world’s largest auctioneers of toys. Perhaps less well known is the fact that the company also organise shows and, for some years, have put together the successful London Toy Soldier Show at The Royal National Hotel in London’s Bloomsbury.

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.

NEWARK antiques centre Trade Space have announced that they have ceased trading and have no assets to pay off debts.

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.

LONG-TIME readers may recall that I used to wonder why East Anglia, such a fertile ground for everything from agriculture to antiques shops, remained something of a wasteland in terms of fairs. What, I asked, held organisers back? The place may be a little off the beaten track but it is rich in artistic heritage from Cotman and Constable to Munnings, it has history from Hereward to Nelson and there has always been money from medieval wool days through to the present acres of wheatfields.

NEW York City is never a shy and retiring place, but its profile will be bigger and brasher than ever from August 30 to September 2 when the Republican Party Convention takes over Madison Square Garden.

EARLY bookings for Antiquaris Barcelona suggest that next year’s 29th annual staging of one of Spain’s top fairs will be markedly more international than it was earlier this year.

FAIRS two weekends running at opposite ends of England make for a busy programme for the Harrogate organisers Galloway, beginning with their Naworth Castle Antiques Fair at Brampton, near Carlisle in Cumbria on August 20 to 22.

FAIRS organiser Jackie Raleigh of Newbury, Berkshire has sold her company Silhouette Fairs to Andy and Sheila Briggs of Oxfordshire-based Fat Cat Fairs.

THE long month of August may be a good time to relax, but for glass enthusiasts the end of the month offers the perfect chance to get the pulse racing once again.

WHEN Birmingham-based organiser Fran Foster announced last year that she was bringing her successful Antiques For Everyone formula to the capital in the middle of August, many observers, frankly, thought she had been sitting in the sun for too long. Particularly since her chosen venue was Earls Court Two, where Olympia’s organising arm, Clarion Events, had tried and failed to get a high summer fair off the ground just a few years before.

JUST in case you are jetting down to the jetset principality of Monaco this week to catch some sun and glitter, currently there is some culture to complement the hedonism.

ROBERT Bowman, one of the key players in dealer-led initiative London Sculpture Week, is launching a new venture to attract City executives into the antiques market.

BOTH visitors and exhibitors were delighted with the Kent Pavilion, the new facility unveiled to antiques buyers at the Detling Antiques & Collectors Fair on July 24 and 25.