Antiques Centres

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 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.

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.

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.

A support group has been formed by the 100 or so dealers with claims against Anthony Gilberthorpe, the previous owner of Stonegate Antiques Centre in York.

CHOCOLATES and roses will be bought by the ton over the days leading up to St. Valentine’s on February 14. But for those looking for a more novel way of pleasing a loved one, Grays Antique Market in Mayfair offers plenty of scope.

MEDIA star and Deco expert Eric Knowles officially cut the ribbon when popular Oxfordshire antiques centre The Swan at Tetsworth unveiled its new Art Deco Showroom on January 13.

THE future of Stonegate Antiques Centre in York has been thrown into confusion amid a legal row and a police investigation into whether owner Anthony Gilberthorpe should face criminal charges.

UK: A man calling himself Terence Lucas has disappeared without paying for antiques hired in antique centres to use as props in a film. Mr Lucas, who is described as white, around 40-45, 6ft tall, slim and with very short grey hair, visited three dealers in Antiquarius on the Kings Road, London on October 2, claiming to work for a company called Fine Art Research.

Great Grooms Antiques Centre at Parbrook, Billingshurst has closed due to the loss of trade since the opening of a bypass two years ago.

A HARD act to follow will be Elizabeth Fell who after seven years running the whole show is leaving The Swan at Tetsworth, one of our most successful and innovative antiques centres.

FIVE of the six dealers who have left Chelsea antiques centre Bourbon-Hanby are consulting lawyers over whether their leases have been honoured.

LONDON antiques centre Antiquarius say they are delighted to have the opportunity to sign up some of the dealers who have quit nearby Bourbon-Hanby in a disagreement over rent rises and lease terms.

PLANS to give a London antiques centre a makeover – turning it into an arcade for interior decorators – has meant six dealers getting their marching orders... or so it seems.

WEST London’s The Old Cinema in Chiswick, billed by its owner Martin Hanness as the capital’s only antiques department store, is undergoing a major makeover not far off a century after it was opened in 1910.

FLOOD waters threatened to sink a £1m antiques emporium just weeks after its official launch. The flowing lines of antique and interior design dealers Mansers’ new showroom on the outskirts of Shrewsbury echo those of an ocean liner, but Mother Nature added the final touch when the River Severn burst its banks last Tuesday, leaving the new building seemingly afloat in the turbid waters around the historic Shropshire county town.