A Perfect Pair

LONDON—The Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair—held since 1934 at its namesake Park Lane hotel in London—is grand and glamorous in an oldworld, utterly English way. This year it is being opened on June 12 by Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra, a cousin of the Queen, while the Duke of Bedford is providing three Canalettos from Woburn Abbey, his stately home, for the annual loan exhibition.

Running through June 18, the event, as usual, has an outstanding lineup of galleries: 85 of the world’s finest dealers are offering everything from a rare marquetry bookcase to Helmut Newton photographs to antique jewels. Among the new additions is the London based Andrew Bruce & Bordeaux Index Fine Wines, on hand to give advice on wine investing. Fair veteran Mallett Antiques, of London and New York, has a George II green lacquer bureau-bookcase, circa 1730. London’s Fine Art Society is bringing the English painter Christopher Wood’s Street in Tréboul, a vision of the Brittany coast village painted in 1930 (sadly, the year the artist committed suicide, at 29), for which it is asking £350,000 ($693,200). New York’s À la Vieille Russie, the only U.S. participant, has a dazzling booth this year. Its stand is lined with malachite, the semiprecious sea green stone from which many of the treasures inside—vases small and tall, carved figures and a sled on a rock-crystal base—were created. In addition to these, the dealer has also brought a selection of Fabergé pieces that are from private collections and new to the market.

Across town the 35th edition of the Olympia International Art & Antiques Fair runs from June 5 to 15 in an 86,000-square-foot convention center in London’s Shepherd’s Bush neighborhood. The setting, part of the complex where Sotheby’s midmarket salesroom used to reside, may not be as posh as the Grosvenor’s, but it has advantages—most notably, it affords the nearly 260 dealers ample space to display their wares and, however large the crowds, never feels claustrophobic. And the range of material, and prices, is wider than at Grosvenor. Époque Fine Jewels, of Kortrijk, Belgium, has a sensuous gold, diamond and enamel nymph brooch by the jeweler René Lalique. London’s Robert Dickson & Lesley Rendall is showing a 1940s mahogany triple-section bookcase, both delicate and strong in appearance, designed in 1948–49 by the Italian duo Ico and Luisa Parisi and priced at £58,000 ($115,000). The stand of Vanderven & Vanderven Oriental Art, of Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, is a knockout: a freestanding structure in black leather with a wall of black glass, the work of the Dutch designer Marc de Lang. Among the impressive pieces displayed is a Tang Dynasty (618–907) terra-cotta mingqi, or “spirit object,” priced at €95,000 ($150,000). The fellow atop the camel was intended to be buried with someone rich and powerful.

Capitalizing on its overlap with Grosvenor House, Olympia provides a Bond Street shuttle service connecting the two locations. And although its atmosphere is far more casual than that of its compeer, connoisseurs find Olympia equally seductive.

"A Perfect Pair" originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2008 Table of Contents.