Antiques Trade Gazette 43 fairs & markets


Enjoying the Turner effect


Joan Porter reports


IN early May I wrote a short piece in this column about Margate shortly after the Turner Contemporary gallery opened there. Until then, this depressed seaside town had few claims to a place on the cultural trail.


Since the opening, crowned by a visit


from the Queen in November, when she met Margate-born artist Tracey Emin, 300,000 visitors have poured through the doors, doubling in eight months what was the hoped-for footfall for a whole year. All this has revitalised the Old Town


in an arty way, although not without stirring controversy among shopkeepers elsewhere in Margate. Some 30-plus new businesses have


opened in the Old Town in the past year. Jane Holbrey, who with her partner John Solway owns Holbrey and Solway, an antiques shop selling decorative art and antiques in this part of town, got in touch to give us some positive feedback. “We’ve been dealers for 30 years


– we exhibited at the NEC – and took a chance on Margate nearly two years ago when we fell in love with the superb architecture in the Old Town. Since the Turner Contemporary opened our turnover has increased by 500 per cent, largely Modern British art, mostly


Above: in Margate, this 19th century mahogany artists watercolour box is priced at £375 from Holbrey and Solway, an antiques gallery in Margate’s Old Town which is benefiting from the Turner Contemporary effect.


figurative in the £200-500 bracket. So Tracey Emin’s comment that commerce follows art is absolutely true.” And she added: “The Old Town is


flourishing, with 15 antiques, vintage and retro shops plus ten contemporary art galleries and really good small coffee shops and restaurants. It’s an undiscovered gem.” Thanet District Council leader


Bob Bayford commented: “The new businesses that are springing up in the Old Town are helping to breathe new life into Margate. This is a town which is very much on its way back up.” www.holbreyandsolway.co.uk


Fill those stockings


WITH just a week to go before the country goes into Christmas freefall, here are a few fairs and markets to check out this weekend for a gift that is green, thrifty and a one-off. Give the high street a miss unless it’s an antiques shop or centre, of course. n BATH’s monthly Sunday vintage and antiques market held in the city’s


Victorian Green Station building kicked off earlier this year and is going well. Organiser Naomi Knight is getting ready for her special Christmas market which, she says, will be packed to its fine vaulted glass roof rafters with 70 traders, plus a charity Christmas tombola, mulled cider and mince pies. BBC Homes and Antiques will be there for a future feature on the market. Telephone Naomi on 07723 611249. n RUTH and Paul Thurman of Field Dog Fairs are at Oundle School on


December 17 and 18 with their antiques fair. Maintained by the Worshipful Company of Grocers since 1556 with its motto God Grant Grace, the public school is in the old market town of Oundle, near Peterborough. Tel: 01780 410286. n IN the gracious Derbyshire town of Buxton, David Fletcher of Unicorn


Fairs will be in the Octagon Building, worth a visit for the place itself, at the Pavilion Gardens on December 17. Tel: 07800 508 178. n ALAN Cartwright will be counting them all in at Derby University on


Saturday and Sunday, December 17 and 18, with Jaguar Fairs’ 200-stall antiques and collectors fair. Tel: 01332 830444. n ANTIQUE kitchen and garden pieces make good presents as Dona


Dawson-Hewitt has found with her new regular kitchen and garden paraphernalia market held on the third Sunday of the month at the Civic Hall in Totnes. Husband Richard does well there, too, with his steel sculptures. Tel: 01803 840252. n KITCHENALIA, particularly piscatorially decorated plates, is often a


feature at Cindy Mainwaring’s longstanding and popular seaside brocante in Whitstable’s St Mary’s Hall. Cindy will be dispensing Christmas cheer, while her standholders will be on the tills on Saturday, December 17. Textiles are good here, if you’re thinking about linen for Christmas parties. Tel: 01227 773037.


The days when you could bank on Rupert


HE was in the news back then and he’s still there. Twenty five years ago, in January 1986, Rupert


Murdoch’s News International group moved production of its four national newspapers to a new non-union printing plant at Wapping. Overnight more than 5500 workers were sacked and what followed was, along with the miners’ strike of 1984-5, one of the most protracted and bitter disputes in Britain’s industrial history. Purchased for £8 by collector Malcolm


Warrington at an Ephemera Society fair earlier this year, this spoof banknote was handed out during the strike declaring on the front: “People all over the country have stopped buying his papers. Please do the same.’’ Ironically, they’ve now certainly stopped buying one of


them: after the public backlash following phone hacking at the News of the World and the removal of advertising, News International closed the paper this summer. Mr Warrington, a member of the Ephemera


Society for 30 years, largely collects Victorian greeting cards, Valentines and scrap albums – www.scrapalbum.com – but is drawn, like many other ephemera collectors to unusual ephemera and “often strays into other areas, as the Murdoch item well illustrates”. If you fancy a stray into this collecting world,


the society’s next fair is on Sunday, February 5 at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel in Southampton Row in London’s Bloomsbury. www.ephemera-society.org.uk


Above: an example of the Wapping bank notes produced in protest when Rupert Murdoch took on the print unions in 1986.


send fair s and mark ets information to joan porter at fairs@atgmedia.com


Left: two regular traders at Bath’s monthly Sunday


vintage and antiques market which holds its Christmas special on Sunday,


December 18.


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