Dealers

JUST about six weeks into the new year and on the antiques fair front things are much like last year. Fairs so far have neither really flourished nor foundered. At best they tick over with some dealers doing very well. At worse they end with no exhibitors having enjoyed any real success. We are still waiting for the blockbuster fair.

FAR from the traditional image of the stuffy bookseller, Mayfair-based Biblion, who deal in antiquarian books and first editions out of Davies Mews, W1, are celebrating St. Valentine’s Day with what can best be described as a sonnet-o-gram.

AFTER a couple of years in the country, London dealer Alasdair Brown has returned to Chelsea and is preparing to dive back into the London trade melee.

ONE of London’s most concentrated areas for art dealing, St. James’s, SW1, has a new gallery specialising in fine antique prints – Isaac and Ede at 1 Duke of York Street (Tel: 020 7925 1177).

New company threatens duped dealers: The many victims of the misleading fair guides that landed dealers and auctioneers with bills for hundreds of pounds are being contacted again by an aggressive overseas debt collection company.

FOR their third biennial exhibition, Blumka Gallery of New York and Kunsthandlung Julius Böhler of Munich join forces for a truly stunning collection of recent acquisitions at Blumka’s premises at 209 East 72nd Street.

CAN a mere movie affect the antiques market? The answer would appear to be yes, at least in New York where, since the release of The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, interest in the ancient Japanese weapons of the Samurai has soared with a significant number of new collectors entering the field declaring they have been inspired by the film.

LONDON: OPENING in the heart of Greenwich this week is a familiar name in a new location, Walpoles, which is located at 18 Nelson Road, London SE10 9JB (Tel: 0208 305 3080).

WELSH period furniture dealer Ian Anderson of F.E. Anderson & Son has joined LAPADA’s board of directors. Mr Anderson’s business was started by his great-grandfather in 1842 and he still works from the original four-storey premises in the High Street of Welshpool, Powys. “We were one of the original members when LAPADA was set up,” said the new director, who joined the family firm upon leaving school in 1966.

LAST year was not a good year for Partridge Fine Art – in fact according to John Partridge, the firm, founded in 1905, suffered their worst set of results in his 46-year chairmanship. Now, however, a change in business direction is helping the Bond Street dealership – one of the capital’s most venerable and traditional – to turn their fortunes around.

Dealers on London’s Pimlico Road will learn shortly the results of their efforts to fight rent increases proposed by Grosvenor Estates. A meeting with landlords has been scheduled for June 9 with Grosvenor promising a “positive solution” to the issue. Presumably this will mean reversing earlier proposals to raise rents to £95 per square foot that came after rises from £43 to £65 imposed in December 2000.

WHILE in New York for the International Fine Art Fair, I dropped into Mallett’s new shop at 929 Madison Avenue. It could not have a better location and it is glamorous enough to have already made its mark in this select corner of Manhattan.

BEFORE we get steeped in the London June fairs, Essex organiser Robert Bailey revives his Petworth Antiques Fair at Seaford College in West Sussex from May 30 to June 1.

ANTIQUE dealers and interior designers are to the fore in the second annual Pimlico Road Garden Week which will be held from May 19 to 24 to coincide with the nearby Chelsea Flower Show.

THE stock market may be going down and tourists numbers dropping thanks to foreign conflict, but in Pimlico Road, antiques dealers are facing the biggest threat from their second huge rent hike in just over two years.

Mallett revealed a 47.6 per cent rise in turnover and a 20 per cent rise in pre-tax profits in 2002, described by chairman George Magan as “one of the most challenging years” in the history of the London dealership.

LONDON: PIMLICO, SW1 has long been a prime London area for antique hunting, but now it is gaining an increasingly high profile as an international centre for decorative work of all descriptions.

LATEST British dealers to cross the Atlantic in search of American sales are Bond Street’s Partridge Fine Arts who, until this Saturday, January 25, hold a selling exhibition at the New York premises of art dealers Dickinson Roundell.

A selection from one of the least known public collections in the country is going on exhibition in London for the first time. Eighty of the best pieces from the birthplace museum, Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury, are being lent to the art dealers, Agnew’s in London.

COSTAS Kleanthous, pictured right, has been appointed a director of the board of LAPADA, the UK’s largest professional art and antique dealers’ association.