Set fair for 2020

The year’s trade had an excellent start, with high prices achieved for a cheese-toasting dish, a stone Apollo, an Art Deco rug and slabs of the Berlin Wall

- Huon Mallalieu

AS we noted in our February 19 Leader, the art and antiques trade is surprisingly buoyant and, at present, its mood is positive. Evidence from the first fairs and auctions of the year supports our assessment.

When I visited the Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square, W1, for the opening event of the London year, the Mayfair Fair, I was greeted with the heartening news that one of the items featured in my January 1 preview had sold off the page and that there had been six enquiries about it before the fair opened. This was the rare Paul Storr silver cheese-toasting dish with Mary Cooke.

The Art Nouveau and Deco glass specialists M & D Moir sold a complete shelf-full to one regular client and another Art Deco dealer, Jeroen Markies, took £1,450 for a Swiss Jaeger- LeCoultre brass and glass clock (Fig 3) dating from the 1950s.

On the opening day of the Decorative Fair in Battersea, Stuart Atkinson of Fontaine, a Ledbury-based dealer, reported: ‘Overall, it has been pretty good. We’ve had such a high footfall and one private customer purchased every painting on our stand—all 43 of them.’

Large and traditional items also did well at this event. Vagabond Antiques of Fittleworth, West Sussex, for instance, parted with a collection of 18th-century staddle stones priced at £3,500 to a new customer; a life-sized 18th-century carved stone figure of Apollo on its original plinth (Fig 1), ticketed at £32,000; an 18th–century Italian painted chest of drawers at £4,600; a reclining leather Victorian armchair; several upholstery items; and ‘a really nice George III period lacquered chinoiserie chest at £5,500’.