Vintage Fashion & Textiles

Collectors who missed out on a rare late 19th century cabin trunk at auction last week have the chance to buy another in West Sussex this coming Friday.

This rare sampler, just 6in (15cm) across, was completed by a girl from the Queens Orphan School in Van Diemen’s Land (the island of Tasmania) in 1838.

Launched in Norfolk 10 years ago by local Zoe Keegan, the Little Vintage Lover Fairs team will be back at the same venue where it all started in the pretty coastal village of Blakeney for the winter Christmas fair on Sunday, December 1, at the village hall.

Thirty of the top textiles and tribal art dealers will be exhibiting at the 'London Antique Textiles & Tribal Art Fair' at the Hilton Olympia in Kensington High Street on Sunday, November 10.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

One curiosity from a book and manuscript sale held by Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) on July 10, this kid glove or gauntlet represents the final challenge to trial by battle in English legal history.

Meg Andrews deals in antique dress and textiles and is a consultant to the Heritage Lottery and museums. She promotes textiles as hangings for interiors.

The charity Oxfam estimates that it saves about 47 million items of clothing a year from landfill. Its new superstore in Oxford is promoting Oxfam’s 'Second Hand September' campaign with the aim of encouraging people to buy vintage instead of new clothes.

The National Museums of Scotland has been revealed as the buyer of the Storrar Coverlet – a rare woollen textile withdrawn at the 11th hour from a sale at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh in August.

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.

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

Private buying dominated as Essex saleroom Sworders (23% buyer’s premium) offered the selected contents of a Cotswold manor house.

Metalware in all its forms played a major part in the development of the Bauhaus and recent sales contained examples in every price range.

Patchworks stitched together by successive generations in poor Japanese communities offered in Kensington exhibition

A north-west Persian carpet in the Esfahan style c.1700, offered for a price in excess of €30,000 by Massoud Milani from Paris, was one of the leading sales at the first HALI Fair in London’s Mall Galleries.

Pleased as the vendors were to be told by Gloucestershire auctioneer Martin Lambert that a 1920s trunk from their late parents’ home could be worth £2000, they were happier when pre-sale interest in Tayler & Fletcher’s recent sale brought a revised estimate of £2500-4000.

With interest high in vintage clothing, we ask fair organisers for their views on the market.