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There, about 70 dealers will be selling 1000-plus tons of architectural salvage, garden antiques, urban industrial, steam punk and reclaimed building materials, much of it to the trade, from Friday to Sunday, June 22-24.

The crossover of architectural antiques into mainstream antiques and interior design is now seamless as a look at the exhibitor list for this year's Salvo shows.

Salvo on the move

This year a pop concert at Knebworth Park has meant a move to Maidenhead but Salvo organiser Ruby Hazael is confident of success and busy handling exhibitors up to the last minute.

"The Old Radiator Company who are in the process of buying Minchinhampton Architectural (MaSCo), are threatening to bring an old showman's wagon," she says. "And Dirk Dijstra from Holland has just told me he is booking again - he had some really beautiful doors and windows last year."

Another attraction at Salvo comes courtesy of Guildford-based auctioneers Wellers, one of the show's sponsors, who will be holding a traditional man-with-a-bell auction on site every day of the show.

Salvo is at Stubbings Estate, Henley Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire from Friday, June 22 (trade day, set up from 6-9am, kids banned on this day). Opening hours on from Friday to Sunday are 11am to 5pm. Trade day admittance £15, Saturday or Sunday £8 per adult and £4 per child aged 4-16. Free car parking.

Here is a taster of what's coming to the fair…

 

Take a pew

Ecclesiastical antiques specialists Lawrence Skilling and Steve Williams of Antique Church Furnishings, based at their farmhouse in Surrey, will bring masses of chapel chairs and pews to Salvo selling from £25 upwards and maybe a few organ pipes.

Plenty of churches are modernising now, says Laurence, which is where much of his old stock comes from. That is from the ones that are closing (Anglican) as well as opening (Pentecostal).

Sadly one piece from their Gothic stock which Lawrence and Steve won't be bringing to the fair is a wonderful, heavily decorated Baroque-style stone font (£395 if you're interested).

 

Casting light on Victorian streets

AS to be seen on TV… the handmade black Victorian-style lamp-posts and lanterns which cost £799 from new Salvo exhibitors Black Country Metalworks will also star in an upcoming BBC drama.

The Oswestry company have been commissioned to produce such street lighting for a dramatisation of Emile Zola's 1890s novel The Ladies' Paradise.

Billed in BBC-speak, as 'Larkrise comes to the city' and set in a department store in a Northern city, it is due to be screened next year.

 

Sweet dreams from France

The popularity of Salvo extends to France, Holland and Germany, and two regular Salvo dealers coming across from France this year are Kevin Green of Reclamation Warriors and Keir Lewis. Kevin did so well with his antique French iron and brass beds at Salvo last year that he's bringing a load more at prices from £225 to £2500, including a sweet 19th century Moses basket at £225.

Keir, meanwhile, has some suggestions about how to recycle a large old calvados still from Normandy. Measuring 3ft x 7ft (91cm x 2.13m and weighing 1220lbs (100 kilos), it could look a stunner in the right garden.

Or, says Keir, it could be ideal for an owner of a cider apple orchard keen to make intoxicating apple brandy. Keir has more calvados stills available.

Talk to him about prices.

 

New angles on mangles

Recrafting lights is Guy Trench's obsession; he has 230 of them for sale on his website at Antiques by Design. At his Essex workshop there are few old objects that Guy hasn't made into table lights: taps, propellers, tennis rackets, snowshoes and my favourite, a cavalry boot. In time for his stand at Salvo, Guy has now turned his attention to industrial machinery and, in particular, the humble mangle. From this he's created: a mirror from the wheel, hanging lights that were once the cogs that ran the rollers and a wall light from the guard that protects the cogs.

 

After the ballroom was over

Long-term Salvo exhibitors Nadine and Jason Davies of Architectural Forum in North London are among the prime movers in the architectural reclamation business.

The company has been involved in some major salvage removals, including the sale of what remained of the Baltic Exchange in the City - seriously damaged by an IRA bomb in 1992 - to two Estonian businessmen in 2006 for £800,000.

This year they are bringing a mighty, eight-panel, 14ft (4.62m), 19th century mahogany doorway, a detail of which is shown right.

Embellished with an urn, cherubs and garlands, it was once in the ballroom of a Hampstead, North London, mansion owned by the pill-manufacturing millionaire industrialist Sir Joseph Beecham.

The magnate spent vast amounts of money lavishly restoring the property, around which he liberally dotted the Beecham coat of arms Nil sine labore (Nothing without Labour) - rather an irony as the house was the ASLEF headquarters from 1921 until last year.

The Beecham door is not expected to sell at the show, says Nadine, but is more of a publicity focus. The price is up for negotiation by someone who likes a bit of 19th century excess.

 

The vintage iceman cometh

A year ago, John Bodrell bought 240 unrestored original iceboxes - hardwood cupboards with zinc or tin linings insulated with materials such as cork, rice husks or even seaweed, which were the food cool-storage option before the spread of electric refrigerators in the 1920s and '30s. He then founded The Vintage Fridge Company.

John's restored 1930s Brazilian and French fridges are finding plenty of buyers; he sold 20 at the Battersea Decorative Arts Fair this year.

He's bringing a selection priced at £10,000 to £14,000 to Salvo. From John's website comes this picture, left, of a trader selling ice in Michigan in the 1920s.