A bronze statue stands in the foreground at an Easter edition of the Isle-sur-la-Sorgue fair.
Now renamed the International Antiques and Flea Market Fair of Isle-sur-la-Sorgue by the new organiser SNCAO-GA, the August fair runs from Friday to Tuesday, August 11-15, in the Parc Gautier on the banks of the River Sorgue.
There are currently no exhibitors from the UK scheduled to stand at the fair in August but ATG has tracked down a Brit who has lived in France for many years who will be exhibiting.
Alan Bradbury and his husband Mickaël Pigeau deal in antique and vintage textiles from their home in southwest France.
Alan Bradbury, front, and husband Mickaël Pigeau, exhibitors at the Isle-sur-la-Sorgue fair this summer.
Bradbury says: “I moved to France in the early ’90s and started dealing professionally here and in the UK in 2000. The Brexit hammer means that it’s now almost exclusively fairs in France.
“The Isle fair is a new adventure, one of the many experiments to compensate for the loss of my UK circuit. We had a great first fair and are renewing the experience in August.
“It’s not a very big event, but very decorative and of course there are all the antique centres and shops in the town. Lots of visitors, very cosmopolitan.
“The trade arrives in the first day or two moving on from Barjac, and that same weekend there’s fabulous offerings at Villeneuve-sur-Avignon and Carpentras so the circuits are planned.”
This picture from August 2022 was taken at the antiques fair and brocante held twice a year in Barjac.
Talk of the town
The Barjac event Bradbury mentions is a large antiques fair and brocante that runs twice a year in a small Renaissance town in southern France overlooking the Cévennes, an hour’s drive from Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.
The August edition this year runs for five days from August 11-15, same dates as the Isle fair, and takes over the entire town.
