Matthew Adams (right) pictured in the early 1980s, alongside his brother Marcus selling an abundance of candlesticks at one of the many fairs held in London on Sundays at that time.
This month, as he celebrates 35 years of organising the Adams Antiques Fairs monthly Sunday events in central London, he looks back at those early heady days when on any given Sunday there would be at least six antique fairs in and around London.
“The leading fair organisers were Harvey Fairs run by Patricia Harvey and her husband Ralph, KM Fairs organised by Kate Marlow, Margaret Brown Fairs and Step-in Fairs run by Miss Simmonds at the Royal Horticultural Hall in Victoria,” he says.
The list of 21 London venues for these fairs, many of them hotels, is dizzying.
They included the Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury, the Waldorf in Aldwych, the Cumberland at Marble Arch, the Grosvenor at Victoria, the Strand Palace Hotel and even the Café Royal in Regent Street and Imperial College.
Venues on London’s outskirts took in Alexandra Palace in north London.
Adams stood at all these fairs and one of his favourites was the one run by Step-In Fairs at the Royal Horticultural Hall which he liked so much he bought the fair in 1989, renaming it Adams Antiques Fairs with the first edition under the new banner running on Sunday, May 21, that year.
Thirty-five years later some exhibitors are still standing including Jonathan Oliffe, Sophia Blanchard, Linda and Stewart Cropper and Didier Haspeslagh.
“Sadly every one of those other fairs has now vanished and most of the organisers have passed away. Never again will we hear the lament ‘there are too many fairs’,” adds Adams.
Adams Antiques Fairs’ next event at the ‘Horti’ is on Sunday, May 19, when there will be celebrations with the 134 exhibitors for 35 years of this fair’s existence.
