34 24th September 2011 dealers’ dossier
Anna Brady reports
email:
annabrady@atgmedia.com tel: 020 7420 6625
Local tailoring
A GOOD case of horses for courses. Two of the fairs previewed this week, in Harrogate and Battersea, are both established fixtures that are fine-tuned to their locations, their differing styles and stock speaking volumes about what works in these two affluent pockets of the UK. Louise Walker’s Harrogate fair offers
a diet of quality, and predominantly traditional art and antiques, and has become a twice-yearly port of call for many buyers from the local area, across the North of England and sometimes from further afield too. In this North Yorkshire spa town,
smart, middle-market period furniture is still desirable to many, as are, notably, substantial pieces of jewellery, silver and paintings of varying periods and styles. In short, passing trends seem to have less of an effect here. Meanwhile, the triannual Battersea
Decorative Fair, owned now by David Juran of Magus Antiques (although established in 1985 by Patricia Harvey and her late husband Ralph), caters to a quite different clientele. This fair now pulls in quite a young crowd of affluent Londoners, as well as being a key date for interior decorators. Although period furniture features here
too, increasingly the event is weighted towards a different aesthetic taste, with much French and Scandinavian furniture, vintage posters, 20th century design and (now voguish) industrial fittings, presented in stylish idiosyncratic room sets that could transfer seamlessly to the pages of any interiors magazine. Here the ‘look’ is key.
Tradition at the core of Harrogate
■ Quality and period stock remains base of Yorkshire fair
THE biannual Harrogate Antiques and Fine Art Fair has become an entrenched part of the North Yorkshire social calendar, and a key event for many UK dealers.
Louise Walker has owned the fair
for the past 30 years, with fixtures now every spring and autumn at the Harrogate International Centre, in the centre of town – the 12th staging of the autumn fair will be in Hall M from September 30 to October 4. It is run in association with the BADA,
and so unsurprisingly there are a good number of longstanding BADA members among the 50 exhibitors here and, as a general rule, the flavour of stock is quite conservative. Among the repeat visitors are some
dealers from London and the South of England whose smart, period furniture has attracted a strong client base up here. They include Butchoff Antiques
of Kensington Church Street, William Cook from Hungerford and Millington Adams from Cheshire. Meanwhile, the more locally based Mark Buckley of Skipton, a specialist in Victorian and Edwardian inlaid pieces, will exhibit here for the first time this year.
For the right things, the spending
power in this affluent pocket of the North is certainly not to be sniffed at. Back at the May fair, Butchoff sold an impressive Royal silver gilt christening cup commissioned from Thomas Heming by George III in 1773 as a gift for his godson, for an asking price of £55,000. Another regular exhibitor who knows
there are serious funds in Harrogate is the St James’ based MacConnal- Mason Gallery, whose showpiece will be a recently purchased painting by L.S. Lowry, priced in excess of £1m. For obvious reasons, Northern artists
and particularly works by Lowry have proved popular at this fair in the past; in May for example Neptune Fine Art from Derbyshire sold two paintings by the Salford artist. Other art dealers include Burlington
Paintings from London (19th and 20th century English and European paintings), and early English watercolour specialist Maurice Edward-Dear from Hampshire.
Above: Regency period mahogany twin pillar dining table, English c.1820, £28,000 from Anthemion at Harrogate.
Left: aquamarine and diamond brooch, from Cartier, London, c.1932, £25,000 from Hancocks at Harrogate.
Two Harrogate-based art dealers
are also among the regulars. These are Walker Galleries, who will be showing a range of 19th century art and Yorkshire artists, and Sutcliffe Galleries, whose director, Helen Sutcliffe, is the northern representative of BADA and was involved in the original inspiration for this event. Elaine Phillips, an early oak dealer,
is another familiar face who makes the short trip from her Harrogate base. Those new to this autumn fair are
Elford Fine Art from Tavistock, bringing paintings from the 18th century to the present day, and the London glass specialist, Mark J West. Jewellery is also central to the
Harrogate fair and this year London- based Hancocks will return after a good debut in 2010, along with fellow London jewellers Licht and Morrison and Shapiro & Co, as well as Howards Jewellers from Stratford upon Avon. Also returning to the fair this year are Anthemion from Cartmel (period
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