Fairs and Markets

Spotlight on businesses in the bustling antiques havens of Suffolk and Norfolk

London indoor fair organisers have begun to announce dates for later this year.

Traders and buyers express relief – and gratitude – at return of twice-monthly fixture.

These weighty tomes contain the complete transcripts from a high-profile court case involving a Mayfair dealership in the early 1900s.

It’s nearly four months since the UK left the EU’s customs union and single market – a hard new reality for those Continental antiques dealers who regularly make the day trip from Belgium, Holland or France to stall out at fairs in southern England.

Swallow Fairs’ first three-day Decorative Home and Salvage Shows this year is the biannual event running at the 14th century Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, from noon on Friday, May 7, to Sunday, May 9.

The moment has arrived for bibliophiles missing the physical sight and touch of books at actual fairs.

After many false dawns Jennifer Titmuss is finally launching her monthly Chiswick Antique and Vintage Market on Sunday May 9.

Anything and everything to do with the garden is how Hyson Fairs describes its popular fairs in Devon.

Sunbury Antiques Market, better known simply as Kempton due to its Surrey racecourse location, last week became the first open-air fair to return after the most recent lockdown.

Dozens of London galleries are primed to open their doors to the public for the capital’s first physical mass art event in months.

Organiser Peter Binfield is hoping for fine weather and a good turnout of 100-plus dealers at the first of this year’s Vintage & Classic Arms Fairs at Kempton Park on Sunday, May 2.

The start of May is likely to be a busy period with outside fairs and markets opening up around England and Wales after a protracted lockdown hibernation. Here is a snapshot of a few of them.

The Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair (DATF) has announced the launch of its latest iteration of the online platform, Digital Decorative, which was set up in response to the cancellation of its physical fairs during the pandemic.

This dance mask known as a takü, would have been used during rituals to mourn the dead by the Cubeo tribes of present-day Colombia and Brazil.

Tony Wittridge is so smitten with the antiques business he is opening in the grounds of Kyre Park, a large country estate at Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire, that he is planning a move to the county from Essex.

Dorking Antiques was launched last August by three dealers: Mark Holden, Eddie Hawkins and David Whalley.