Antiques Centres

NEWARK antiques centre Trade Space have announced that they have ceased trading and have no assets to pay off debts.

NOBODY is pretending that this year has all been sunshine and brightness for the trade, but nor has it been quite as terminally doom-laden as some commentators would suggest.

NEW York City is never a shy and retiring place, but its profile will be bigger and brasher than ever from August 30 to September 2 when the Republican Party Convention takes over Madison Square Garden.

TRADE Space, the antiques trade warehouse, have promised to set up shop in smaller premises after closing their Newark premises suddenly.

RUNNING until next Monday May 31 is the first Art Deco Fair to be held by Woburn Abbey Antiques Centre at Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire.

THE gang targeting antiques centres in the south-midlands appear to have struck again, this time walking away with £4000 worth of carriage clocks.

POLICE are warning the trade to be on the alert after a gang stole £8000 worth of jewellery from Banbury Antique Centre on April 19.

DEALERS at the Saffron Walden Antiques Centre have offered a reward of up to £10,000 for information leading to the return of their stock and the capture of the burglars who stole it.

THE Gloucestershire town of Tetbury is currently the boom city of the antiques trade. In addition to a host of antiques shops it has recently become known for its antiques centres, especially Top Banana who have two centres in the town.

New laws to benefit the disabled due to come into force later this year will have implications for antique shops, centres and auction houses. The Disability Discrimination Act, covering all shops and service providers, irrespective of size, requires companies and venue managers to improve access and facilities for wheelchair users from October 1.

LAST week, after two years of renovations, Judith and Phil Carrigan officially opened their Uzella Court Antiques Centre and Fine Art in the centre of Lostwithiel, Cornwall. The centre is housed in a partly medieval building which has been a shop of one sort or another – most recently a butcher’s – since 1850.

ISLINGTON specialists in Arts and Crafts The Antique Trader move forward a few decades from November 5 to 23 for a selling exhibition of the hottest commodity of the moment, Art Deco. Called simply Art Deco, the show at The Millinery Works Gallery, 85/87 Southgate Road, London N1 brings together 180 exhibits from that period of immense creativity marked midway by the 1925 Paris exhibition of the decorative arts.

HAVING run antique furniture businesses in Hampshire and the Midlands, Max Salisbury upped sticks two years ago to make his fortune in North Carolina. Looking at events in America over the past two years his timing could not have been worse, but now he has successfully established a business at 1102 North Main Street, High Point (Tel: +1 336 883 1494) where he displays his speciality – expertly re-upholstered 19th century English furniture in “natural and uncluttered” room settings.

AT a time when much talk has been about the contraction of the antiques industry, John Lewis, one of Oxford Street, London’s top department stores, have just opened a dedicated antiques department in the main room on their third floor. The John Lewis Partnership operate 26 department stores across the UK and this is their third antiques operation.

“Do you know, if a visitor spends two minutes at each stand at this fair it will take 111/2 hours to get around,” said one prominent dealer at Olympia on the penultimate day of the Fine Art and Antiques Fair, which was held at the West London exhibition halls from June 5 to 15. Actually, it would take a little over 13 hours, but no matter.

The Scottish Tourist Board has given Rait Antiques Centre a much-coveted three-star Tourist Shop Award under the Board’s Visitor Attraction Grading Scheme.

The future of the Barbican Antiques Centre in Plymouth seems all but secure with the current manager of the 50-dealer shop eager to take over when the freehold of the building is sold.

TWO longstanding antique centres, one of them among Britain’s oldest, have bad news: one is to close and the other may have to, as well, if the new owner wants to develop the site for something else.

NOT a fair that has in recent years maintained a very high profile but nevertheless the annual Buxton Antiques Fair has been running for nearly 40 years and is a lot better quality fixture than many better publicised ones.

MAYFAIR’s smart antiques market, Grays, is close enough to Bond Street to attract its fair share of fashionistas, but now it has become a couture centre itself with the opening last week of the luxuriously appointed Vintage Modes.