A corner of a stand at the two-day monthly antiques and vintage fair held in the Suffolk village of Long Melford.
Full house
This year has been a good one for the Long Melford Antiques and Vintage Fair, said organiser Laure Bonner.
“We have a full house of stallholders every month and the footfall through the door is back up to pre-pandemic levels. Customer spend is good in spite of the cost-of living crisis.”
She added: “The village has several antiques shops which is an extra draw for visitors and our November fair coincides with the annual Christmas fair in the village.”
The Long Melford Antiques and Vintage Fair runs at the Old School over the weekend of Saturday and Sunday, November 25-26.
Tremendous buzz
Graham Turner Antiques Fairs is billed as the longest-running and sole midweek datelined pre-1930s fair in the world. The Wednesday, December 6, event in Long Melford is fully booked with 40 dealers from around the UK, said dealer Turner, who apart from the Covid shutdown has never missed organising the fair since he launched it in 1991.
He added: “With so many professional dealers travelling from so many areas including Yorkshire and Kent and bringing in fresh stock every month I am always amazed and very grateful to them for making this such a vibrant fair.”
Regular queues ahead of opening times at fairs are always a good sign and this is certainly the case at the village’s memorial hall where the fair takes place and where, said Turner, “we are squeezed in like sardines which gives it a tremendous buzz”.
Contact Turner on 01379 897266.
Three to visit
The trio of antiques businesses comprises Long Melford Antiques Centre, Little St Mary’s; Melford Antiques, Interiors & Lifestyle Centre, The Old Maltings, Hall Street and Lotus Cottage Antiques (opened in October) in Hall Street.
A quirky gift for the dentist in your life as well as collectors of medical ephemera, four framed handcoloured wood engravings titled The Toothache, one shown, are with Suffolk-based dealer Alison Norman priced at £350 at the Graham Turner fair on December 6. Drawn by satirist George Cruikshank with captions by Punch journalist Horace Mayhew, this was originally published in 1849 as a foldout comic strip in 43 scenes. These describe the patient’s hopeless attempts to cure his tooth pain, his visit to the dentist, the battle to extract the tooth and the final relief when it’s all over.
