Olympia Fair

West End public relations firm Focus PR have been appointed to head up communications services for next summer’s Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia.

Plans are serious but it will take years to fulfil them: Olympia’s owners have assured the Antiques Trade Gazette that plans for a large casino at the West London exhibition complex will not affect the Fine Art and Antiques Fairs.

An early autumn mixed hors d’oeuvres of silver and European ceramics went under the hammer at Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12% buyer’s premium) on October 2. Roughly two-thirds of the 375 lots were devoted to silver and vertu, and the remaining third to ceramics, but it was the latter that provided half of the ten highest prices, including what proved to be very much the top lot of the day.

September was football time for two of the London rooms, Sotheby’s Olympia (20/10% buyer’s premium) fielded a 437-lot sale on September 11 and Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium), who followed on two weeks later with their 302-lot offering on September 23.

Modern British’s reputation as the market of the moment was underlined at Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12% buyer’s premium) on September 10 when the trade had their last major opportunity to buy stock before the 20/21 British Art Fair.

The Stuart Sutcliffe archive received a lukewarm reception at Bonhams Knightsbridge, but Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12% buyer’s premium) are hoping a stamp design by his famous art college friend, John Lennon, will generate more frenzied bidding in their 201-lot Rock ’n’ Roll and Film Memorabilia sale on September 24.

Although it was the clock section that provided the lion’s share of the money generated by Sotheby’s Olympia’s June 19 horological sale (largely thanks to their £800,000 Tompion), the bulk of the content was provided by wrist and pocket watches. Offered in a separate afternoon session, they accounted for 264 of the 395 lots.

Totalling £533,120, the Wingfield Digby collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain offered at Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 12 may not have been the highest grossing sale of the London Asian series but it fielded the fewest casualties and was full of the type of fresh-to-the-market provenanced material at low estimates which the trade crave.

One of the highlights of the English porcelain section of Sotheby’s Olympia’s ceramics sale on July 3 will be a group of pieces from the celebrated Duke of Gloucester Service produced by the Worcester factory c.1775. The service is said to have been made for William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh and Earl of Connaught (1743-1805), younger brother of George III.

The combination of a single-owner collection in a specialist niche corner of the market with a not over-large and mostly market-fresh selection of realistically estimated material were the keys to the warm reception that greeted Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of Scientific instruments in their Olympia rooms on May 28. All bar 15 of the 155 lots, just short of 90 per cent (92 per cent by value) changed hands for a total of £262,350.

Russian Works of Art: Alongside the sale of Russian paintings in their Bond Street rooms on May 21, Sotheby’s also followed on the next day with a sale of Russian works of art at their Olympia rooms.

OLYMPIA’s Fine Art and Antiques Fair has plenty to interest the decorators but they are guaranteed something eye-catching at the stand of Notting Hill dealers Jay Arenski and Peter Petrou, who have made the unusual and decorative their forte. In recent years the pair caused a stir with a bejewelled mummy case (complete with incumbent) and sold out their stand full of Black Forest furniture, which now graces ski lodges from Aspen to Gstaad.

SELDOM do niche fairs catch on so quickly as the splendid Hali Antique Carpet and Textile Art Fair, the sixth of which which will be held in its new location of Level One of Olympia 2 from June 5 to 8.

Getting Sotheby’s Olympia’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) 288-lot April 2 sale of British and European Ceramics off to a brisk start was a well received section devoted to early Italian maiolica, Dutch Delft and other tin-glazed earthenwares.

The Spring Fine Art & Antiques Fair at Olympia, which will be held in London from February 25 to March 2, has received a record amount of publicity thanks to this Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) portrait of Churchill, right.

English glass doesn’t generally compete with Continental for price, so anyone just looking at the top results from Sotheby’s mixed-owner auction held the day before their Japanese museum dispersal might have got the erroneous impression that home-produced material had played a low-key role.

A familiar and dashing figure at Olympia fairs James Brett, the grandson of the founder of the long- established and highly respected Norfolk antique furniture dealership Arthur Brett & Son, has “de-merged” from the family firm, which was founded in 1870.

CLARION Events, organisers of the Olympia Fairs, introduce a new initiative at their Spring Olympia to further emphasise their conviction that presentation and creative stand display in a no-dateline context are the way forward.

New look Olympia fair puts a spring in its step: CLARION Events, the in-house team who organise the Fine Art and Antiques Fairs at Olympia, are adopting a radical new approach to bring in customers for their Spring Olympia fair next February.

BRITAIN’s leading furniture maker and designer John Makepeace calls this exotic and exquisitely crafted one-off piece of furniture English Fruits, and the circular table will be the centrepiece of a special Makepeace feature at the entrance of the Daily Telegraph/House and Garden Fair at Olympia from June 27 to 30.