Fairs and Markets

DEALERS are advised to check their vehicles before leaving showground fairs following a sophisticated robbery attempt at Sunbury Antiques Market.

WHILE print devotees will be flocking to The London Original Print Fair (April 22-25) this week at the Royal Academy’s new space in Burlington Gardens, off Old Bond Street, it should not be forgotten that there are currently a number of other events celebrating the printmaker’s craft.

THE organisers of the Newark International Antiques and Collectors’ Fair are to give a 50 per cent price break to dealers who do not currently stand at the giant fair.

ON Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs of April 28 the castaway was painter Jack Vettriano (b. 1954). When asked by presenter Sue Lawley how much he thought his celebrated oil, The Singing Butler, would sell for at Sotheby’s on April 19, Vettriano’s response was that it would exceed the top estimate of £200,000.

THE new money-laundering laws appear inadvertently to have created a problem for the coin trade.

CULTURA Basel, Switzerland’s only international antiques fair, has been abandoned and there seems no likelihood of reviving the critically-acclaimed fixture.

THE Little Chelsea Antiques Fair is back under the auspices of London ceramics dealer Carolyn Stoddart Scott, who founded it 25 years ago.

FOR some years now, the Thames Valley Antique Dealers Association has held two fairs a year, the autumn one at Radley College, Oxford and, for the past six years, the spring one at Reading Bluecoat School, Sonning-on-Thames, Berkshire. The TVADA Spring Antiques Fair will take place at Reading Bluecoat from April 2 to 4 with a record 36 members taking stands.

A NEW Thursday antique and collectors market will open in mid-May at Spitalfields, Commercial Road, London E1, run by Sherman & Waterman who already have markets in Covent Garden and Portobello Road.

THE Gloucestershire town of Tetbury is currently the boom city of the antiques trade. In addition to a host of antiques shops it has recently become known for its antiques centres, especially Top Banana who have two centres in the town.

FOLLOWING the well-received introduction of master classes to their events last year, DMG Antiques Fairs, the UK’s biggest organiser of the biggest fairs, will be repeating the initiative at 12 of their summer fixtures. Mike Turner, marketing controller at the fairs, says: “The master classes are designed to appeal to both experienced and amateur collectors which is why we hold them during general entry times.”

ORGANISERS Brian and Anna Haughton have cancelled this summer’s London Asian Art Fair citing trade uncertainties over The Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act as the reason.

ESSEX organiser Robert Bailey is not a man easily daunted, which was fortunate when a week before his Cheshire Spring Antiques and Fine Art Fair at Tatton Park he was warned of major road closures for visitors using the M6 and the Manchester route M56.

LAST September, businessman and glass enthusiast Nicholas Lyne sold his stake in Berkshire auctioneers Law Fine Art to his partner and co-founder Mark Law and teamed up with Sussex ceramics dealer Brad Dover of Jupiter Antiques to launch the Kensington Ceramics & Glass Fair, the first of which was held at the Kensington Close Hotel on February 26 and 27.

WHEN it comes to trade fairs it’s showtime all the year round in Milan, but antiques have their biggest flowering in the late spring with two major vetted fairs in the city taking place hot on each other’s heels.

ALREADY a good day out for the public, there is increasing trade awareness of the Oxford Brocante, the third of which will be held on Sunday April 18 at the Randolph Hotel in Beaumont Street. With the emphasis very much on decorative works it also offers vintage fashion.

HOT on the heels of the distinctly glitzy and upmarket Palm Beach Classic, a new fair, the Palm Beach Jewelry and Antique Show, moved into the same venue, the new Palm Beach County Convention Center, with a broader-based, much larger fair, and pulled it off.

THESE are heady times for fairgoers, what with Maastricht, major events in New York and the BADA and Olympia in London. But life goes on, and thrives, nearer the all-important grass roots.

A LONG-ESTABLISHED and popular Belgian fixture is Eurantica, a stylish fair which runs from March 19 to 28 in Palais 1 of Brussels Expo, a stone’s throw from that famous Brussels landmark the Atomium.

FINE weather helped the 43rd Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair welcome around 6000 visitors, up 20 per cent up on 2003, to the city’s Württemberg Kunstverein from January 23-25. The fair, staged by the Verband Deutscher Antiquäre (German Antiquarian Bookdealers’ Association) since 1962, is the largest of its kind in Germany – the 96 exhibitors included dealers from Switzerland, Austria, France, Israel and the UK (Bernard Shapero from London).