Fairs and Markets

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

LINCOLNSHIRE organiser Ruth Thurman, who operates as Field Dog Fairs, holds her tenth annual antiques and collectors fair at Grimsthorpe Castle, near Bourne from July 30 to August 1.

ESSEX organiser Robert Bailey has pulled off a coup by clinching Harewood House, near Leeds in North Yorkshire, as the venue for his 54th Northern Antiques Fair, which will be held from September 22 to 26.

THE new international trade fair for antiques, accessories, restoration and decoration, Novum Antique, planned for September 16 to 19 at Karlsruhe, near Stuttgart, has been cancelled.

NEWS sometimes takes a little time to filter out but I can confirm that at least three dealers made a profit out of last month’s Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia.

NORFOLK organiser (and dealer) Liz Allport-Lomax holds her second Southwold Summer Antiques Fair at St Felix School in the picturesque small Suffolk coastal town from July 23 to 25.

TRADITIONAL and contemporary work will be rolled out for the eighth annual Boston International Fine Art Show in The Cyclorama at The Boston Center for the Arts, Tremont Street from November 11 to 14.

FOUNDED in 1986, the Shelley Group is a collectors’ society dedicated to amassing and appreciating the china products made in Fenton, Staffordshire by the Wileman and Shelley companies during the 19th and 20th centuries.