Belgium

Financier Falcon Fine Art has completed its first art lending deal in Belgium. The firm helped a collector in Belgium borrow against the value of a collection of 19th century “museum-quality” paintings and sculpture.

Over 130 dealers will start setting out their stands next week as the BRAFA art fair, Belgium’s premier art and antiques show, opens in Brussels on January 21.

Tribal art will be making a splash in Brussels around the city’s Sablon area, as it is does every summer, but this year it will be as part of a new cross-cultural promotion.

Art Brussels’ first sale at its new location of Tour and Taxis, the same location as the BRAFA Art Fair, will run from April 22-24.

BRAFA, the Brussels art fair, opened its doors last month for its 61st edition, boosted in space and exhibitors by a new extension.

Organisers Artexis have cut Belgium's Eurantica fair from ten days to five next month.

THIEVES have raided a fair in Belgium and stolen antique jewellery from one of Europe's leading dealers in period jewellery.

BRUSSELS FAIR PREVIEW Over 100 dealers – half from abroad – will gather in Brussels from June 8-12.

Paris auctioneer Jacques Tajan is severing his links with Tajan SA, the firm he founded in 1994, and setting up an art consultancy firm in Brussels, where he has already acquired 1000sqm premises near Avenue Louise.

CONTENTS sales dominated the early May auction action in Belgium, and there were two more held in France later in the month. These were very different affairs – one offering an array of recently acquired furniture and objets d’art, the other being more in the “family heirloom” category.

BRUSSELS have two similar events this month, both of which are festivals rather than fairs, with specialist dealers mounting concurrent selling exhibitions, promoted jointly, and also inviting overseas specialists in the same discipline to show as guests in the Brussels galleries.

ALTHOUGH April saw no headline auctions in Belgian salerooms, several firms in both Brussels and Antwerp were in action and achieved some significant prices.

SPECIALIST ceramics dealers will, once again, be gathering at the historic chateau at Enghien, 20 miles south west of Brussels, this week for the fourth staging of the Salon Céramique Ancienne (Oude Keramiek).

THERE was some erratic bidding for the pictures which dominated Belgian auctions in March.

A LONG-ESTABLISHED and popular Belgian fixture is Eurantica, a stylish fair which runs from March 19 to 28 in Palais 1 of Brussels Expo, a stone’s throw from that famous Brussels landmark the Atomium.

NONE of the February auctions in Brussels were timed to coincide with the Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique (Belgian Antique Dealers’ Fair), staged from February 6-15, perhaps because this was the first year that the new-look fair had attracted such international attention.

Belgian rooms content but no more with 2003 performance: 2003 was a “slightly up-and-down year” for Horta of Brussels, according to firm director Jean-Pierre Julien, but he was satisfied with a four per cent increase in sales from 2002, making it Horta’s most lucrative year since they were founded in 1982.

THERE are few better ways of spending a sunny June afternoon than browsing around the gardens and castle of ’s-Gravenwezel, 10 miles outside Antwerp, as a guest of its owner, the legendary Belgian antique dealer and interior decorator Axel Vervoordt.