A total of 102 specialist glass dealers have signed up, and the stock should prove broad enough to appeal to all tastes.
Such well-known glass dealers as Bill Macadam, Ged Selby and Nigel Benson will be in attendance and, while some exhibitors choose to deal solely in one manufacturer – a good example being Willie Clegg who will take only Whitefriars – others will have a more varied display.
Contemporary glass artists are well represented and many will offer wares of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Glass Circle and Glass Association will also be present and John Smith from The Broadfield House Glass Museum has taken a stand selling specialist glass books.
The fair was founded in 1991 by Patricia Hier, and the Cheshire-based organiser still runs the show to which admission is £4 from 9.30am and £3 from 11am.
ART and craft will also come together when Chiswick studio pottery specialist Joanna Bird holds one of her regular selling shows at 19 Grove Park Terrace, London W4 from May 5 to 19. The show follows her now-familiar format of work by a selection of currently working potters and a group of pieces by past masters including Shoji Hamada, Lucie Rie, Hans Coper and Bernard Leach.
The 11 contemporary potters include Carina Ciscato; William Marshall, a former pupil of Leach; Tatsuzo Shimaoka, who was taught by Hamada; and Paul Philp, whose distinctive output is now well known at top fairs on the stand of his brother, the well-known London dealer Richard Philp.
The exhibition is entitled The Spirit of the Maker and prices range from £40 to £18,000 for a Rie or Coper.
The upper glass – and big-wheel potters
FOR some years now the country’s top glass fixture, the next bi-annual National Glass Collectors Fair will be held at the Heritage Motor Centre, near Gaydon in Warwickshire this Sunday, May 9.
