Just a few days ago, I read this phrase used by a fair promoter to describe the rationale for including disparate types of dealers within their venue. An interesting concept, and by the fair promoters design, they said, to expose attendees to areas of collecting that might be outside their ordinary collecting ambit.
Clever, but, really, what the fair promoter was doing was putting a good face on a bad situation. The fact is, all fairs have such a difficult time attracting better quality dealers that all of them, perforce, become, as they say, ‘cross-collecting’ venues. Sad but true, the numbers of dealers of any stripe are pretty thin on the ground anywhere, and the cost of participating in any fair anywhere puts off very many of those who’ve survived.
Was a time, dealers within one area of collecting would absolutely only participate in fairs where the other dealers offered if not precisely similar material, then at least material that was in some way consonant. Grosvenor House, that fair of blessed memory, was the perfect example of a harmonious linkage- period European furniture of the best quality, together with European paintings of the best quality, and, porcelains, and clocks, and antiquities- well, you get the idea. The collector of one type of material, however, might make a purchase of a similar class of material within a fair that was, shall we say, sympathetically curated.
Sadly, the trade is now so bereft of quality dealers that ‘cross-collecting’ as a rationale for fielding a fair is what we seem to be left with.