Fairs, Markets, Shops and Centres

Mid-century style is very much on the rise at the moment – as the organisers of the two Midcentury Shows in London know well.

Good news comes with the relaunch of a two-day fair in central London. Jane Alexander of Dovehouse Antiques Fairs, which runs monthly antiques fairs in Dorking, has announced that she is taking over the Little Chelsea Fair.

In September 2017 we featured Charlie King and Sam Sparrow, both then aged 13, who were offered places by Philip and Claire Crosthwaite at their monthly Hingham Antiques Fairs in Norfolk.

Every year the town council in the Kent coastal town of Deal, a place described last year as “racy, posh and cultured”, hosts a lively braderie along the High Street and adjoining streets selling antiques and vintage pieces.

The Textile Society has run antique and vintage textiles fairs in Manchester for the past 20 years with its annual London event launching in 2009. Proceeds from these 40-plus standholder events help to fund the society’s awards and bursaries.

Organiser holds events in notable properties with fine heritage

A selection of events in Cheshire, Kent, Bedfordshire and Wales.

Pictured is award-winning photographer and interiors stylist Tamsyn Morgans who runs one of the workshops at Arthur Swallow Fairs’ Decorative Home & Salvage Shows.

Gary Munday has been a specialist dealer in antique boxes for the past 35 years, giving up his shop Mostly Boxes Antiques in Eton in April this year.

London-based vintage costume jewellery dealer Amanda Bhatia, aka Dottie Annie’s Vintage, is a new exhibitor at the Clerkenwell Vintage Fashion Fair.

Spotlight on two upcoming fairs in East Anglia.

Huge York event includes a mobile installation on bird theme.

At a collectables fair in Dublin, talk was of post-Brexit free movement of antiques from north to south.

In January this year we ran a Fairs & Markets story (ATG No 2374) about the Georgian former courthouse in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, which had reopened its doors as an antiques and cultural centre using the first floor only.

The floods which swept north-west England at the end of July involved major downpours hitting Congleton in Cheshire. This included Victoria Mill Antiques and Collectors’ Centre on the edge of town, which stayed open despite flood damage, as this Twitter picture below shows.

As Belfast capitalises on its Titanic history and locally filmed TV series Game of Thrones, two enterprising dealers are seizing the moment to launch a new fair.

A dealer who was so disappointed that the second of the biannual Art Deco fairs held at Eltham Palace in September had been cancelled has launched his own nearby.

Former farmer Ralph Retallack is now an antiques dealer in Falmouth with his partner Nicola Fuller. They are launching an antiques and decorative fair near St Ives this September and are looking to attract more quality exhibitors including architectural salvage dealers.

The words ‘country’ and ‘brocante’ have an allure of their own as Lucy Haywood discovered when she founded the Country Brocante store in the village of Midhurst, West Sussex.

An antiques dealer in the picturesque market town of Bridgnorth in Shropshire is retiring from the trade to concentrate on her writing career.