The launch event proved a triumph and the fair has held up well since then. This year, from June 20 to 22, around 100 exhibitors will be on parade, roughly the same turnout as in 2000 and, again, approximately half the exhibitors are from Scotland.
This is now Scotland’s premier fair and, to a large extent, a very Scottish affair. But it does draw exhibitors from England, a number of whom will have decamped from Olympia only just before the Glasgow opening.
Expect plenty of Scottish pieces, like the range of Mauchline and Tartanware offered by Glendoick dealer Becca Gauldie. And, of course, there will be plenty of Scottish silver.
But on a less parochial note, the established Scottish taste for Arts and Crafts, Deco and the decorative arts generally is now universally popular and will be very well represented, not just by the Scottish specialists Decorative Arts at Doune but also by a number of London dealers like Markov, Zeitgeist and Esoteric. And on a thoroughly international note I see that among the six newcomers to the fair this year is Lewis Deco from Prague, whose forte is English Deco.
The other five dealers making their Glasgow debut are all from Scotland.
All those familiar with the Antiques For Everyone format will now know that there is a Section One and a Section Two but, as at the Birmingham fairs, although one is supposed to be more upmarket than the other, Section Two has some very good dealers and plenty of items of interest.
In the centenary year of Whistler’s birth Glasgow’s Hunterian Art Gallery mounts a loan exhibition of art and artefacts associated with the artist.
Admission is £7.
Scotland’s decorative window on the world
FOR decades it baffled many that Scotland could not host a major, vetted quality antiques fair of any size, but that changed in 2000 when Fran Foster of Centrex, the organising arm of Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, took her successful Antiques For Everyone formula to the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre and launched Antiques For Everyone – Glasgow.
