The highlight of my year, indeed for anyone in the accredited trade, is the running of the two fairs that cap the London season. Olympia is the elder of the two, with Masterpiece the grander, carrying on as it does the Grosvenor House fair of blessed memory. For those few of my gentle readers who are not in the know, the London season was, in earlier times, the general social hubbub of dances, levees, and teas involving coming of age young ladies of the upper crust and their families, culminating in their presentation to the reigning monarch. In a nod to changing times, Elizabeth II abolished these presentation courts in the late 1950’s, much no doubt to the consternation of debutantes in waiting, but then again, the abolition of this custom was inevitable. Even in England, the 20th century was generally accorded the century of the common man, and it was the royal acknowledgment of that hegemonic ascendance that resulted in the throwing out of many aristocratic customs.
Still and all, vestiges of the London season survive, with the fairs arguably the most prominent survival, scheduled as they were at the tail end of the season, very late spring allowing thereby an opportunity for the great and the good still in London to browse and buy before they then decamped for the summer to country estates. While all this sounds like something from one of the earlier seasons of ‘Downton Abbey’, the fairs still operated this way and for this reason certainly in my living memory. The massive Olympia exhibition centre in the fair’s glory years was heaving with hundreds of dealers on two floors, who fought for premier stand placement to get their gear in front of the 50,000 punters who annually made their way into the show. Special trains were laid on to get one to Olympia- and they were crowded with fair-bound riders.
The Grosvenor House fair that was had its run overlap for a few days toward the end of the Olympia fair, allowing foreign visitors- mainly Americans- to make their way across the herring pond and take in both fairs at once. Grosvenor House for all its nearly 80 year history offered the ne plus ultra in the fine and decorative arts, all of it strictly vetted, and with a charity gala to kick it off that must for a few have seemed a fond reminder of the London season of an earlier day. Indeed, for very many years, the fair’s patroness was Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
Masterpiece sought to take the place of Grosvenor House, and in many respects it does, but the dealer mix is not what it was, and now, the fair markets itself as an emporium for luxury goods, with not just traditional fine and decorative arts, but also contemporary material, jewelry, expensive autos, and at one point, wine and wine futures. The rationale seems to have been to broaden the appeal of the fair, thereby increasing the footfall of well-heeled buyers, who then might become ‘cross-over’ buyers exposed to a wider variety of pretty things upon which to spend their money.
For 2018, it doesn’t appear things went all that well. For Olympia, over the last few years, the size of the fair has shrunk to about 25% of formerly, with it too introducing contemporary material, and the run of the fair has been reduced. And, in its outing just concluded the fair was linked with another event, The House & Garden Festival- a promotion of House & Garden magazine- all of which an effort to increase footfall that has seen a number of years of decline.
And the effect of all this effort? As The Antiques Trade Gazette has it, ‘a number of satisfied dealers, but also a sense of gloom’. While a few dealers felt that the linkup with the other event might have brought in a few new buyers, footfall was light, continuing the decline it sought to stanch, and of those dealers who sold well, a very many of them sold well at the very bottom price point levels- one dealer cited brisk sales in the £300 to £800 range. With a minimum cost to show in the low 5 figure range, one can’t imagine one could ever sell enough 3 figure items to even cover one’s cost.
Masterpiece ostensibly fared better, with sales of items in the 6 and 7 figures reported, bearing in mind of course that with the average run of stock priced at many times that of a typical Olympia offering, any reported sales would have an impressive price tag. The fair though has expanded over the years, with this year’s 160 dealers representing a high point- but with a few dealers former Olympia stalwarts, the increase possibly cannibalizing the older fair. As well, with the fair’s expansion, the cost of the stand has been made a little bit more affordable, attracting dealers of some different disciplines, most notably contemporary art. Indeed, one dealer in contemporary art, new to the fair, was quoted as saying the fair was nearly as frenetic as the art fairs they usually participate in. Good news, but moderated in my view with the knowledge that their participation was limited to sharing a stand with a dealer in traditional furniture and decorative arts. In former, more prosperous times, sharing a stand would never be allowed by fair organizers, simply because the organizer would seek to sell, and could sell, two stands, and not just one if sharing by two dealers were allowed.
So it appears the fairs this year did not perform shall we say robustly overall, and with Olympia’s future direction, even its very future, very much in question. Sad irony, as I read the article in The Antiques Trade Gazette about the recent Olympia, the adjacent article was a profile of a contemporary art dealer in our old stomping grounds of Islington, who spoke of the internet and particularly Instagram as a boon to his business. Though he works hard to properly exhibit the stock he represents, doubtless the internet and social media is the virtual foot in the omnipresent virtual door.
And of course it is this virtual omnipresence that however much dealers and fair organizers may dislike it that continues to scoop the guts out of the success of even the most venerable fair. While we might think of the presently unsettled state of the world, exacerbated it seems by the almost demented actions of certain people in the American capitol, it is the ability through the internet to offer even the casual browser any day and at any time day or night a virtual fair custom designed to the browser’s own preferences that will render at the least problematic the success of any actual non-virtual fair in times to come. If my gentle readers had hoped for any particular new insight into the fate of fairs and any real suggestions about a way forward, I’m sorry to disappoint. It has seemed to me for a good long while now the only hope for the trade is to try to soldier on, with the hope that, in the fulness of time, fairs will once more become a lively outing for more people. In the near term, however, as with the Islington dealer cited above, at best the fair has now become just another, albeit sadly less important, item in the dealer’s bag of tricks, and most prominently an adjunct to one’s online presence.