Fairs, Markets, Shops and Centres

“There are great fairs and brocantes in France but this is special, not least because of the venue.”

It’s been a packed year with new fairs starting up as well as relaunches.

Though the organisation IACF is best known by its acronym, it’s hard to forget what the initials stand for. AA road signs guiding drivers into the Newark showground emphasise the word ‘international’ and the fair is known for its ability to attract overseas trade buyers.

When Natalie Smith opened the Woodbridge Antiques Centre in the pretty Suffolk town 11 years ago, she said she was given a great piece of advice: never compromise on quality and presentation.

Doom and gloom surrounds retailing in the UK but in the trade plenty of antique centres are bucking the trend. Here we bring you a short focus on a few of them – ideal places to buy a variety of stock offered from a number of dealers in one spot.

A regular stallholder at Arthur Swallow Fairs is Liam Woodgates, director of the Hopkinson Vintage Antique and Art Centre in Nottingham, where a corner display is pictured below.

A trip to France before Christmas to buy unusual gifts is always a good plan. Here are three antiques and vintage brocantes to visit: two well-known weeklies in Paris and a biannual event in Bordeaux.

Cary Whitley has been running her biannual Love Vintage brocantes in June and December in Wanstead, east London, for eight years, with the next on Saturday, December 8.

Events at Ludlow Castle, St Stephen's Church and Hodson Hall

Sally Knott has been running the biannual two-day Dorset Brocante for three years at two venues: in August at Deans Court, Wimborne, and in the autumn at Larmer Tree Gardens, near Salisbury.

IACF is expecting a buoyant antique and collectors’ fair at Alexandra Palace on Sunday, December 2, including items sourced from shipwrecks.

For its fourth year, Art Fair East comes to Norwich.

News from Antiques on High, the antiques centre saved for the city of Oxford when it was bought by antique furniture dealer Vincent Page last year, alerted via a tweet about a story in ATG.

Two years ago we featured ex-paramedic Allun Davies and his business selling vintage luggage in the Gwent town of Pontypool.

The range of choice in antique and vintage jewellery makes for ideal one-off special presents – try the dedicated 30-dealer jewellery fair pictured below, with baubles from the Georgian period onwards.

Antiquarian and out-of-print book and ephemera collectors will be in heaven on the weekend of December 1-2 with two fairs at the Holiday Inn London Bloomsbury in Coram Street.

It’s party time at Savitri Coleman’s Clerkenwell Vintage Fashion Fair in the Freemason’s Hall, Great Queen Street, on Sunday November 25.

Our picture below from a past event shows that Art Deco is quite often a speciality at Polly and Peter Trapmore-Shaw’s antiques and collectors fairs held in the Lincolnshire town of Spalding.

Decoratives dealer Marcus Potts is the enthusiastic organiser of the well-regarded biannual Antiques at the Holt Fair which runs at the Holt Hotel, Steeple Aston.

One of the busiest of Naomi Knight’s monthly markets at the Listed Green Park Station in Bath is her Christmas Vintage and Antiques Market.