Fairs and Markets

Bookings are going well at the Knebworth Park Decorative Salvage and Vintage Fair for Sharon Blagrove, aka Bentleys Fairs.

Written in 1960, Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls broke the silence on sex in a socially repressive Ireland, seen through the lives of Kate and Baba, two young Irish country girls yearning for love who move from rural Ireland to Dublin to find it.

‘Come one, come all to 'Masterpiece', buying ground for the best and rest.’ Such, in essence, is the rallying cry of Harry Apter, co-founder of the premier London fair, which has its eighth run from June 29-July 5.

The city of Council Bluffs is the seat of Pottawattamie County in IOWA and takes its name from the Potawatomi Native American tribe.

A quintessential English village is how Buriton, near Petersfield in east Hampshire might be described. It nestles at the foot of the South Downs and boasts two pubs, a church, a large village pond with ducks and a village hall.

Stock-buying trips prove successful for one American as she heads back to Blighty once more...

Every year in July the railings on tree-lined Josephine Avenue in Brixton become a vibrant space; an open-air gallery exhibiting more than 1000 pieces of work from over 200 artists, printmakers and photographers.

John Slade of Take Five Fairs has regretfully had to cancel all his future Tolworth A3 antiques and collectables fairs held at the Tolworth Recreation Centre, near Kingston in Surrey.

The Charing Cross Collectors’ Market, at the bottom of Villiers Street, near Charing Cross Station, has to be one of the longest running niche fairs in London.

Six years after the Victorian Hastings Pier was gutted by fire, it reopened last year after a £14m redevelopment. The funding included £11m from the Heritage Lottery Fund as well as monies raised locally and regionally.

Sue Norman is a practised hand at The Art & Antiques Fair Olympia (June 26-July 2). As an exhibitor at this west London event for 36 uninterrupted years, she knows the show well, is familiar with the crowd it attracts and approaches it strategically.

BADA has just unveiled plans for a smaller fair, BADA Collection at the Lanesborough, to launch in October (ATG No 2295). So here we ask: do smaller, more select fairs make better business sense?

Asian art dealer Gerald Davison has taken a selling space in The Emporium in Berkshire, which he plans to run as well as his current space at Acreman St Antiques & Interiors.

The prolific 18th century writer Daniel Defoe, of Robinson Crusoe fame, wrote poetically of the River Waveney which forms the 50-mile boundary of the Waveney Valley between Norfolk and Suffolk.