Fairs and Markets

“WE’VE got 1700 exhibitors at our March fair at the East of England Showground and we’ve been fully booked for six weeks now, with 1100 stallholders inside three large halls – including the Cambridge Suite with fine quality pieces – and marquees, and 600 dealers outside,” said Chris Hart of Bob Evans Fairs , the organiser of the twice-yearly Peterborough Festival of Antiques.

One of the highlights of this year’s TEFAF (The European Fine Art Fair) in Maastricht was this delightful Chinese Warring States bronze wine pourer formed as a tapir on the stand of St James’s, London Oriental specialists Littleton and Hennessy.

FOR the third successive year, dealers from the UK’s two major antiquarian bookselling organisations, ABA and PBFA have combined forces at the Edinburgh Book Fair which this year takes place on March 23 and 24 in Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms.

Exhibitors find a fortnight in London too costly to bear

SILKS from China, carpets from Persia, cottons, shawls and kilims from India, Euopean embroidery and lace, antique buttons and bows – some of these fine textiles, fabrics and accessories are now an essential part of any vintage fashion fair.

BELGIAN art dealer Maximin Berko is the driving force behind the Shanghai Fine Jewellery and Art Fair which will be launched at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre from October 13 to 21 this year.

ON Friday and Saturday, February 23 and 24, the Royal Bath and West Showground at Shepton Mallet will host the largest postcard, tradecard, postal history and ephemera fair in the UK.

THE untimely death on January 16 of Robert Noortman, the charismatic Dutch picture dealer who co-founded of the TEFAF Maastricht art fair, inevitably raises questions about the controversial relationship between Noortman Master Paintings and its owners Sotheby’s.

ROBERT Noortman, the high-profile Maastricht picture dealer and one of the founding fathers of the TEFAF Maastricht fair, has died of a heart attack, aged 60.See next week's ATG for a full report.

WE regret to announce the death on January 5 of long-time exhibitor and chairman of TEFAF Maastricht Dave Aronson. He was 60.

“Dealers in fear of a turfing-out” ran the story in ATG No 1722, January 14, which told the story of the Somerton Antiques Centre, home to 27 dealers.

“We've timed it just right, opening a new fair,” said Trevor Vallis of Wyefairs, who is adding to his portfolio of events in Kent this year.

HOTELS, restaurants, insurance, security, shippers and packers, design and print, marketing and promotion. These are just some of the ancillary industries that benefit when the show comes to town.

AT £420m, the deal would have brought St James Capital a 70 per cent profit on the £245m they paid for the complex just two and a half years ago. But it appears that last week’s London Evening Standard scoop on the sale of Earls Court and Olympia was, at the very least, a little premature.

Not exactly your typical ATG reader – this great picture was taken by Lucy Naughton, a 27-year-old with a passion for photography who has been finding inspiration at antiques fairs.

MISSING Book Fairs, named after the fairs’ eponymous organiser, Chris Missing, are moving one of their six events from one stately home to another.

THERE’S a fairs reshuffle in the medieval town of Rye in East Sussex.

DAN Godfrey is opening an antiques and collectables centre at the Grade 2 Listed late-18th century watermill at Barton Le Clay, north of Luton in Bedfordshire.

JUDITH Lidell is celebrating the success of her first vintage fashion fair on her home patch of Newcastle-on-Tyne on Sunday November 19.

Contemporary art plans for Shanghai and Dubai