Fairs and Markets

POSTCARD collecting is believed to be second only to philately as the world’s most popular collecting hobby so here is early warning of what is guaranteed to be a very popular event, The Picture Postcard Show 2003 which will be held at the Royal Horticultural Halls, Westminster, London SW1 from August 27 to 30.

The Scottish Tourist Board has given Rait Antiques Centre a much-coveted three-star Tourist Shop Award under the Board’s Visitor Attraction Grading Scheme.

The combination of a single-owner collection in a specialist niche corner of the market with a not over-large and mostly market-fresh selection of realistically estimated material were the keys to the warm reception that greeted Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of Scientific instruments in their Olympia rooms on May 28. All bar 15 of the 155 lots, just short of 90 per cent (92 per cent by value) changed hands for a total of £262,350.

The future of the Barbican Antiques Centre in Plymouth seems all but secure with the current manager of the 50-dealer shop eager to take over when the freehold of the building is sold.

Russian Works of Art: Alongside the sale of Russian paintings in their Bond Street rooms on May 21, Sotheby’s also followed on the next day with a sale of Russian works of art at their Olympia rooms.

BRITISH pottery specialist John Howard, whose particular enthusiasm is Staffordshire, is a familiar figure at quality fairs and when I caught up with him last week on his stand at Olympia he told me that there had been some changes on the home front.

HARROGATE-based organisers Galloway Fairs do not have to leave their home county of North Yorkshire for the summer staging of The Duncombe Park Antiques Fair, which will be held this weekend from June 13 to 15 at the home of Lord and Lady Feversham at Duncombe Park, Helmsley.

FOR decades it baffled many that Scotland could not host a major, vetted quality antiques fair of any size, but that changed in 2000 when Fran Foster of Centrex, the organising arm of Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, took her successful Antiques For Everyone formula to the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre and launched Antiques For Everyone – Glasgow.

US: DATES of October 14 to 20 have been fixed for the second annual New York Fall Fair at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York, and the opening night preview party will benefit the Frick Collection, one of Manhattan’s most celebrated museums.

IT will be some months before many deals are clinched and further money changes hands, but with some exceptions I think the 61 top dealers at the tenth International Fine Art Fair in New York from May 9 to 14 found their stay in Manhattan profitable.

SELDOM do niche fairs catch on so quickly as the splendid Hali Antique Carpet and Textile Art Fair, the sixth of which which will be held in its new location of Level One of Olympia 2 from June 5 to 8.

OLYMPIA’s Fine Art and Antiques Fair has plenty to interest the decorators but they are guaranteed something eye-catching at the stand of Notting Hill dealers Jay Arenski and Peter Petrou, who have made the unusual and decorative their forte. In recent years the pair caused a stir with a bejewelled mummy case (complete with incumbent) and sold out their stand full of Black Forest furniture, which now graces ski lodges from Aspen to Gstaad.

JUNE looms and the annual antiques season is due to get underway. Fairs are at the hub of proceedings and while Grosvenor House initiated this summer celebration of collecting and connoisseurship back in the 1930s, the latest addition to the June roster, artLONDON, has made its mark in a remarkably short time.

VETERAN organiser Donald Bayliss, who operates out of Ludlow as Continuity Fairs, reports a stunning response to his first International Antiques and Collectors Fair of Wales, which was launched at the Royal Welsh Showground at Builth Wells over the Bank Holiday weekend of May 3 and 4.

AS announced earlier this year, Beckenham’s own Brian Simons and Philip Thompson, who trade as DECOFAIRS, relaunch their London Art Deco Fair at the Chelsea Village Hotel, London SW6, on Sunday June 8.

BEFORE we get steeped in the London June fairs, Essex organiser Robert Bailey revives his Petworth Antiques Fair at Seaford College in West Sussex from May 30 to June 1.

TWO longstanding antique centres, one of them among Britain’s oldest, have bad news: one is to close and the other may have to, as well, if the new owner wants to develop the site for something else.

OUR flagship fair and one of the world’s most prestigious antiques events, the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair remains as traditional as strawberries and cream at Wimbledon and Pimms at Henley, but no one can say the most venerable of antiques events has failed to move with fashion.

BIRTHDAY greetings to the Carmarthen Antiques and Collectors Fair, for a decade Wales’ top antiques show.

MAGRITTE'S Oiseau du Ciel, pictured right, commissioned by Belgium’s Sabena airline in 1965, was sold at auction in Brussels on May 5 for a triple-estimate €3.4m (£2.3m).