Beauty and Elegance from Days Gone By 18/06/2012 14:28:00
The exhibitions hall at the 40th Olympia International Fine Art & Antiques Fair
By Karen Dabrowsk (Reporting from London)
If you think of antiques as worn out, objects that have reached their sell by date and belong in Charles Dickens’ Old Curiosity shop think again.
In West London’s Olympia exhibition centre over 200 exhibitors displayed exquisite antiques, sparkling and polished reflecting the beauty and elegance of days gone by. The occasion was the 40th Olympia International Fine Art & Antiques Fair
There were 70 furniture specialists, 18 from overseas, 40 new dealers and 30 who returned to this year’s fair after a break. The fair, now in its 40th year, attracted around 30,000 collectors and enthusiasts. Prices ranged from £100 to one million.
The mix of dealers brought a rich and eclectic mix covering 34 disciplines such as 20th century design, contemporary, haute epoque, 18th and 19th century English furniture, modern British art, tribal art, ceramics, carpets, silver and jewellery and antique reclamation to name but a few.
The main items from the Middle East were carpets and rugs. London-based Sharafi & Co displayed a variety of Persian carpets ranging in price from £200 to £12,000.
Mehdi Sharafi from Iran has supplied leading retailers that included Liberty, Conran, Fired Earth and John Lewis. Sharafi, whose carpets are all hand made, told The Tripoli Post that there has been a lot of interest in carpets from “people who like culture, people who like nice decorative pieces and understand the workmanship, the craftsmanship and the art that goes into these pieces.” He sells carpets from Iran, Turkey the Caucasus and China.
The tallest piece at the fair was a 19th century Spanish pinewood spiral staircase, 12ft tall, and 3ft diameter, the oldest piece was a 4.5 billion year Campo del Cielo Meteorite, the newest piece was a spitfire memorial table (diameter 10ft 8inches) made of pieces of old spitfire planes, completed in May 2012, the largest piece of hallmarked silver this century was a wine cistern weighing 1200 troy ounces.
Fossil Decor’s stand featured a number of 10,000-year-old mammoth tusks from Siberia popular with Chinese buyers. The largest weighed 60 kilos. Prices ranged from £6,000 to £50,000.
Hawkins and Hawkins of Tasmania and Scotland sold the £1.5 million, 32-piece Toilet Service by Benjamin Pyne of London commissioned in 1708 by the Duchess of Norfolk’s father for the marriage of his 16 year old daughter to the Duke of Norfolk, which secured the bride's family a position in the first flight of English aristocracy.
John Hawkins said “A case could be made for this being the most important surviving complete suite of fully documented Queen Anne silver made by an English silversmith.”
The enormous cost of £701 pounds 18 shillings and 10 pence (about £stg500,000 in today's money) had to be paid in instalments. When the Duke and Duchess separated in 1729, it was agreed that ‘The Duchess was to have the use of the said jewels and toilet set for her natural life’, it to be returned to the Norfolk’s on her death.
This stipulation was complied with and in 1754 the service was returned to Edward Duke of Norfolk the brother of her late husband. The service was sold to a private overseas buyer.
Jeremy Taylor of The Taylor Gallery had the best first day ever at a fair, selling £400,000 worth of 20th Century British paintings to British buyers. Galerie Arabesque from Germany had an excellent start to the fair, including selling an original Mogul tent window to a private collector.
Clive Loveless, specialist in tribal art, decided to return to the fair after 10 years and was pleasantly surprised, having sold around 20 pieces in the first few days, including some key pieces to an international interior designer.
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