“Masterpiece was much more of a shopping fair and I think it will probably be the same atmosphere.” “It's not quite the same animal as Maastricht where people make a pilgrimage,” he says. Green expects clients who may be in London for the summer season-which includes social events such as the Royal Ascot horse races, the Wimbledon tennis tournament and the Chelsea Flower Show-to attend the new fair. “A lot of dealers don't have the infrastructure to do all that,” he says. Jonathan Green, the chief executive of Richard Green, thinks that “Brexit is undoubtedly a problem”, particularly when it comes to the red tape around shipping. Masterpiece’s chief executive Lucie Kitchener said the twin headwinds of the pandemic and Brexit had made the event commercially unviable. The now defunct fair was more international in scope, but was cancelled in January over “escalating costs and a decline in the number of international exhibitors”, according to a spokesperson for MCH Group, which owned Masterpiece. (The full list of dealers can be found at the bottom of this article.)Ĭovering a diverse range of disciplines ranging from fine art and furniture design to jewellery and antiquities, the Treasure House Fair is around one-third of the size of Masterpiece, which launched in 2010 with 140 dealers.

Of the 44 confirmed galleries, 35 have London spaces, six have galleries in the US, five are based in Europe and two operate in East Asia. It's imperative,” he adds.Īt the new fair, Phillips is joined by the likes of Richard Green, Charles Ede, Didier, Piano Nobile and Adrian Sassoon. “It’s so much a part of what goes on in London. Grosvenor House was an art and antiques fair founded in 1934, which folded in 2009 one year before Masterpiece was established. It's always been part of the season, going back to the Grosvenor House days,” says Simon Phillips, the chairman of Ronald Phillips antique furnitures dealers and a co-founder of Masterpiece.

“London is desperate for an art fair in June. The Treasure House Fair (22-26 June), formerly the London Summer Art Fair, is being launched by two of the original founders of Masterpiece-the London dealer Thomas Woodham-Smith and Harry van Der Hoorn, who owns the Dutch stand building company Stabilo. More than 40 leading dealers, the majority of them based in London, have thrown their support behind a new art fair announced last month, which will take the place of the cancelled Masterpiece fair in Chelsea in June.

The ashes of london