A colleague in London has just told me the Grosvenor House Fair has been ‘scrapped’- his term- for the indefinite future. A profound disappointment as the fair, pardon the cliché, is the granddaddy of them all, and, in my opinion, the ne plus ultra of fairs featuring English antiques. One of the most pleasurable and looked forward to experiences in my life has been attendance at the Grosvenor House Fair.
However, it is attend that is all I ever did, to see what the big boy dealers in 18th century furniture were doing. Buy? Well, that’s another matter, and that must have been the absent, and crucial, feature that, at bottom, militated the decision to cancel the fair. The primary reason cited was that the hotel owner could put the Grosvenor House Great Room, the fair’s venue, to more profitable use. Well they might, as it is unlikely the fair participants would be able to pay more in stand rental: it would hardly be surprising to find the fair organizer actually sought a reduction in facility rent from the hotel.
No question, both Olympia and Grosvenor had tough sledding this year, with the general economic malaise contributing to poor attendance and lackluster sales. As well, London Old Masters Week and the non-participation of a number of show stalwarts doubtless further functioned to siphon off would-be show attendees.
Ironically, the Grosvenor House fair got is start in 1934 in order to give the ailing antiques trade a shot in the arm during the Great Depression. It has become a casualty of the present economy along with a number of dealers who survived the 1930’s to meet their demise in the panic of 2008-2009. With the world wide economy at present manifesting what have quickly become known as green shoots, it might be hoped, for the antiques trade, that the scrapping of the Grosvenor House fair constitutes the darkness before the dawn.