Fairs and Markets

OPENING with a grand private preview on June 8, and continuing until June 15, for the 70th year the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair will run at The Great Room of the Grosvenor House hotel on Mayfair’s Park Lane. And, no doubt, it will show, once again, why it is the country’s top fair and one of the world’s top antiques events.

SMALLER, more modest events, I am sure, benefit from the big fairs in town. Visitors to the Hali fair, for example, may well find the London Antique Textiles, Tribal Art and Decorative Antiques Fair on Sunday June 6 at Hammersmith Town Hall in King Street, London W6 to their liking.

THE 19th instalment of the Milano Internationale Antiquariato closed its doors on May 16 after a nine-day run at the city’s Fiera.

THE Ephemera Society holds its Summer Special Fair at Le Meridien Russell Hotel, Russell Square in London’s Bloomsbury on Sunday June 13. Expect more than 100 tables covered with greetings cards, newspapers, magazines, autographs, playbills, menus and all manner of paper collectables.

THE organisers of the Newark International Antiques and Collectors’ Fair say more than 100 dealers have taken them up on an offer of a 50 per cent price break for those who do not currently stand at the giant fair.

NOW in its sixth year artLONDON has proved a popular and worthy addition to the roster of June fairs. Indeed, in this relatively short time it has become as much a part of the London summer scene as its much more venerable and mainstream stablemates, such as Grosvenor House and Olympia.

JUNE in London means the big fairs, an increasing number of dealers’ selling shows and, this year, such trade initiatives as Art Fortnight and London Sculpture Week. It is the month when all eyes are turned on the capital’s art and antiques trade and dealers, collectors and museum curators fly in from all over the world.

The ABA’s annual Antiquarian Book Fair, which this year will be opened by the writer Frederick Forsyth, will run from June 3-6 at Olympia. Illustrated and/or very briefly described here are half a dozen items promised by dealers from Britain and the USA.

WHILE hundreds of dealers will be heading to London in June, this weekend, from May 29 to 31, others are heading out of town to the Langley Park Spring Antiques Fair, organised at Langley Park School, Loddon, by Norfolk based Liz Allport-Lomax of Lomax Antiques Fairs.

RUNNING until next Monday May 31 is the first Art Deco Fair to be held by Woburn Abbey Antiques Centre at Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire.

AT its seventh staging, the popular Hali fair at Olympia is undergoing some major changes, not the least of which is a name change. The event is now titled The Hali Fair: Carpets, Textiles and Tribal Art. The duration of the fair has been extended from four to 10 days and it will take place in the National Hall Gallery at Olympia from June 3 to 13, at the same time as the summer Fine Art & Antiques Fair. The fairs will be linked allowing easy access between the two.

AS if there are not enough fairs in June in London, busy Sussex organiser Caroline Penman has decided to launch another, but at least this is far from the centre of town and does not tread on the toes of any of the established events.

ON The Wall is the name of a new fair aimed at the contemporary art market which will be launched from September 29 to October 3 at the Grand Hall, Olympia.

FOLLOWING the supremely successful launch of her West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter, earlier this year, Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs might have been tempting fate with another launch so soon after. Certainly her first Oxford County Antiques Fair, at beautiful Eynsham Hall, near Woodstock from May 7 to 9, was not an event to remember.

YORKSHIRE organisers Galloway Antiques Fairs make one of their many trips to Scotland this weekend for the Blair Castle Antiques Fair at Blair Atholl, Pitlochry, Perthshire.

AFTER a five-year gap, Essex organiser Robert Bailey returns to Seaford College for his 30th Petworth Antiques, Fine Art and Investment Fair. He had many successful years at the college near Petworth in West Sussex, then he took a break due to some difficulties over the venue. Now he is back in the college’s Robertson Centre.

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.

FROM April 20 to May 3, West Country organiser Louise Walker staged her 30th anniversary Harrogate Antique & Fine Art Fair and not only did it cement its reputation as one of the very top provincial fairs, it also gave most of the 70-odd exhibitors something to celebrate.

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.