Fairs and Markets

TWICKENHAM dealer Cliff Woods, who after two successful fairs at the Star and Garter in Richmond now puts events together as London Antiques Fairs, is on the move in 2004.

PARIS FIAC, the main fair in the French capital for Contemporary art, took place from October 9-13 at the Porte de Versailles. FIAC has lost ground in recent years to Art Basel and its recent Miami offshoot, and the launch of the London Frieze fair has taken more international galleries away from it this year.

NOT far from their Harrogate base, Galloway Antiques Fairs mount their Duncombe Park Antiques Fair in the stately home of Lord and Lady Feversham in Helmsley, North Yorkshire from November 7 to 9.

NOTTINGHAM-based organiser of specialist Deco fairs Nick Cox, who trades as Abbey Fairs, has increased his stable to five since last December and he launches a new event at Kelham Hall, a gothic manor house near Newark, next year.

WORKING under the name Palm Antiques Fairs, Norfolk-based Joy Fletcher launched her Palm Antiques Fair at Blackthorpe Barn, Rougham, near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk over the weekend of September 26 to 28 and tells me both she and her exhibitors were happy enough with business to warrant a re-run on March 26-28 next year.

ISLINGTON specialists in Arts and Crafts The Antique Trader move forward a few decades from November 5 to 23 for a selling exhibition of the hottest commodity of the moment, Art Deco. Called simply Art Deco, the show at The Millinery Works Gallery, 85/87 Southgate Road, London N1 brings together 180 exhibits from that period of immense creativity marked midway by the 1925 Paris exhibition of the decorative arts.

TEXTILES are currently a popular commodity and Wimbledon organiser Paola Francia-Gardiner, who operates as P&A Antiques, has two fairs next month catering for this still expanding market.

MIDDLESEX organiser Carl Barnes has found much favour over the years with his specialist clock fairs, so he was dismayed recently when fire destroyed the National Motorcycle Museum, long the venue for his Midland Clock & Watch Fair.

CHANGES are afoot over the next few months at the popular Malvern International Antiques & Collectors Fair, held every month at Worcestershire’s Three Counties Showground.

London has shed its reputation as the world’s only major art market centre without a major contemporary fair with the inaugural Frieze Art Fair in Regent’s Park.

RUNNING at the racetrack since 1988, Caroline Penman’s Chester Antiques & Fine Art Show is a favourite with both local collectors and the 60 or so dealers who regularly exhibit. It will be held, as usual, at the County Grandstand, Chester Racecourse from October 23 to 25 and, also as usual at this event, most stock will be pre-1920.

MORE worthwhile activity from our busy and productive local dealers’ associations which have surely proved their worth now, even to traditionally independent sceptics. As the stalwarts of the Cotswolds Antique Dealers’ Association wrap up their series of exhibitions, the equally industrious members of the Thames Valley Antique Dealers’ Association prepare for their autumn fair.

An early autumn mixed hors d’oeuvres of silver and European ceramics went under the hammer at Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12% buyer’s premium) on October 2. Roughly two-thirds of the 375 lots were devoted to silver and vertu, and the remaining third to ceramics, but it was the latter that provided half of the ten highest prices, including what proved to be very much the top lot of the day.

APPLICATIONS from dealers to join the first National Fine Art and Antiques Fair, to be held at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre next year from January 28 to February 1, already suggest that this could be a major player on the national fairs scene.

CHIPPING Norton, Oxfordshire dealers Jane and Keith Riley, who trade as Key Antiques at 11 Horsefair, go back to their roots for their contribution to the Cotswolds Antique Dealers’ Association’s series of selling exhibitions.

ONE never associates the Chelsea Antiques Fair with thronged aisles and a rush of business, but after more than half a century it must be doing a lot right and the 97th staging from September 17 to 22 at the Old Town Hall in the King’s Road, SW3, did not disappoint most of the 35 exhibitors.

The fair with the best chance of giving New York and the trade a much-needed lift: I REMEMBER clearly two years ago in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan one of the most severe tests for the international trade was the cancellation of London organisers Brian and Anna Haughton’s International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show, America’s top antiques fair.

September was football time for two of the London rooms, Sotheby’s Olympia (20/10% buyer’s premium) fielded a 437-lot sale on September 11 and Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium), who followed on two weeks later with their 302-lot offering on September 23.

WITH an exhibitor list well down on last year, Essex organiser Robert Bailey’s 53rd Northern Antiques Fair at Harrogate from September 17 to 21 did not enjoy a vintage staging, with a number of exhibitors expressing disappointment at the attendance and general level of business.

HAVING run antique furniture businesses in Hampshire and the Midlands, Max Salisbury upped sticks two years ago to make his fortune in North Carolina. Looking at events in America over the past two years his timing could not have been worse, but now he has successfully established a business at 1102 North Main Street, High Point (Tel: +1 336 883 1494) where he displays his speciality – expertly re-upholstered 19th century English furniture in “natural and uncluttered” room settings.