Fairs and Markets

MADAM – I note with interest that the Firsts London rare book fair is on the move again (News, ATG No 2454).

Organiser of events across the country has fingers crossed for fairs scheduled later in 2020.

PBFA (Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association) has held four monthly online book fairs, with the fifth going live to the public at noon on Saturday, August 29. Up to 15 books/items can be put up for sale by each bookseller member.

Suzanne Hall is the organiser of a small monthly midweek antiques and fleamarket in Old Windsor which is reopening as lockdown eases on Wednesday, September 2, at the Memorial Hall.

For the first time in 26 years GNB Fairs will not be running an antiques and collectors’ fair at the Brentwood Centre in Essex over the August bank holiday weekend.

Gary Wallis, organiser of the 'Henley Decor Fair', is delighted that all the exhibitors who booked for the original May/June event at Greenlands Park beside the Thames are on board for the reorganised dates following its cancellation due to the pandemic.

Thirteen-year old Miles Raymond from Tunbridge Wells started collecting after he found an old bottle in his grandparents’ garden. He would like be a dealer in the future, but his career path also leans towards design and engineering – with his interest in antiques a useful influence.

“We opened at the earliest opportunity two months ago and were immediately ridiculously busy,” said David Skeet, general manager of the Brighton and Lewes fleamarkets.

Kate Lee, an antiques dealer in Beccles on the edge of the Norfolk Broads, is also co-organiser of the Beccles Antiques Market.

The timing could have been a disaster, but three dealers who opened an antiques centre in Dorking at the beginning of the month have been rewarded for their ambition by a very encouraging start.

Dovehouse Fine Antiques Fairs’ mid-summer fair at the Dorking Halls on August 16 has been cancelled.

Nathan Alexander is a busy man. He has opened three antiques centres in three years with two in Southampton and a third in Fareham, all under the same title of Robin’s Nest Emporium.

The Petworth Park Antiques & Fine Art Fair can go ahead as planned in September after the National Trust deemed it an ‘outdoor’ event.

Jay Fairs aka Joy O’Meara, who launched her fairs in Oxfordshire in the 1980s with her sister Jill Napper, is excited about the return after a four-month absence of her popular monthly antiques fair at the parish hall in Benson, near Oxford, on Sunday, August 16.

As well as dealers’ websites and multi-dealer portals, a number of online events are taking place this summer that feature a range of traders. Here is a selection of some of the places to find art and antiques online in the coming months.