UK

YOU might well detect a distinct whiff of testosterone in the air around Mayfair’s Bruton Street later this month when a selling exhibition Gentleman’s Relish: 200 Years of Machismo runs at the Shapero Gallery at No. 24 from September 24 to October 17.

THE Somerset auctioneersGreenslade Taylor Hunt were taking a bullish view about August sales. A month of “traditionally smaller sales and fewer buyers but not in Taunton” was the official line after a two-day event of more than 2100 lots on 28-29 August.

Bailey, BADA and local firm all in action making September a month the town will remember: Well-used to antiques as they are, the citizens of Harrogate will be spoilt for choice this month with two major fairs in different parts of town, mercifully with a five-day gap between them.

On an April morning of this year, Guy Davis, book consultant to Bamfords of Derby, gave an interview on BBC Radio Derby in which he talked about a copy of the first Rupert annual of 1936 that was to be sold at auction later that same day.

Fred T. Jane is a turn-of-the-century artist who doesn’t make much of an impact in the sort of standard reference works that line the office walls of serious auctioneers and dealers.

IF his 34th Cheshire Autumn Antiques and Fine Art Fair at Tatton Park over the weekend of September 4 to 7 was an indicator then Robert Bailey’s Harrogate fair should turn over nicely.

ALL 43 exhibitors at Caroline Penman’s Petersfield Antiques Fair enjoyed some business at the Festival Hall from September 5 to 7 with a majority reporting good sales.

Consigned to Sworders by a dealer who had bought it when clearing a London office, this George III patent extending mahogany dining table created a massive amount of interest when offered by the Stansted Mountfitchet auctioneers on September 9. “When it arrived it was so obviously a good thing,” said specialist Guy Schooling who found two potential candidates for the maker, S. Martin, whose name and the inscription Invenit et Fecit appeared on a brass plaque applied to the base.

With the retirement at the end of this month of the Alnwick auctioneer Ian Robertson, Newcastle-upon-Tyne auctioneers Anderson & Garland are to assume control of the 40-year-old business.

North Yorkshire auctioneers Tennants, who bought the Heathcote Ball name earlier this year, are to open a consignment office in Leicester this month but have no plans to hold auctions in the Midlands.

OF all the imminent fairs, the one for which market omens are most favourable is the popular 20/21 British Art Fair, which will take place at the Commonwealth Institute, Kensington High Street, London W8 from September 17 to 21. While the art and antiques industry has been reeling in recent years, one area which has consistently bucked the trend is 20th century British art.

ONE thing you cannot accuse DMG Antiques Fairs of is resting on their laurels. Their Newark International Antiques & Collectors Fair, held six times a year at the Nottinghamshire showground, is Europe’s biggest.

FAIRS dominate the diary this week as they do the current trade scene generally, but that it not to say dealers have forgotten the arts of self-promotion. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of his business, J. Collins & Sons, Devonshire dealer John Biggs is best known as a period furniture dealer. But he always carries a good stock of paintings and holds his 47th picture show at his showrooms at 28 High Street, Bideford this month.

FIRST out of the pack of September quality fairs is the oldest, The Chelsea Antiques Fair, which was founded in 1950 and runs again at Chelsea Old Town Hall in the King’s Road, London SW3 from September 17 to 22.

LINCOLNSHIRE-based Grosvenor Exhibitions are professional organisers in a number of fields, not just antiques, but they are upping their antiques profile with a new Midlands fair scheduled for December.

DECO continues to be very much the field in favour and, while it is making its presence felt at fairs at all levels, you will be hard-pressed to find a location more in sympathy with the style than Eltham Palace in South London.

CHISWICK-based dealer in studio pottery, Joanna Bird, presents her seventh annual exhibition at Browse & Darby, 19 Cork Street, London W1, from September 15 to 20, centred on the work of eight leading contemporary potters, Elizabeth Fritsch, Julian Stair, Edward Hughes, William Plumptre, John Spearman, Daniel Fisher, Michael O’ Brien and Danlami Aliyu.

THE list of manufacturers who made cocktail shakers and accessories in the interwar years reads like a roll-call of the great luxury houses of the early 20th century: Asprey, Cartier, Tiffany, Hermès, Alfred Dunhill, Louis Vuitton, Puiforcat, Lalique and Baccarat. However, the firm responsible for some of today’s most coveted cocktail shakers is J.A. Henckels of Dusseldorf.

THE Wallace Collection’s exhibition From Palace to Parlour, A Celebration of 19th century British Glass may not shed any new academic light on the subject but it draws attention to a period often ignored by traditional glass collectors: the 19th century. “The 19th century has been completely overlooked,” says independent scholar and glass consultant Martine Newby who curated the exhibition on behalf of the Glass Circle.

While the antiques trade no longer totally shuts down during late July and August it really gets into gear in September, a particularly intensive time for antiques fairs. There are three major fairs in the capital this month, The Chelsea Antiques Fair, The Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair and the 20/21 British Art Fair.