CADA members head to Chelsea
Members of the Cotswold Art & Antiques Dealers’ Association (CADA) will be displaying a diverse selection of antiques and art at the Cotswold Art Antiques Chelsea, which will open for four days at Chelsea Old Town Hall in the King’s Road, London from March 20-23.
A number of the association’s members will be joined by several guest exhibitors at the event.
Highlights set to be offered for sale include a selling exhibition of Vulliamy clocks on the Tobias Birch stand. Featuring around 20 longcase clocks, wall clocks and some previously unknown Vulliamy mantel clocks., the timepieces are by Benjamin Vulliamy and Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy. This is the first time an antique clock dealer has held an exhibition of Vulliamy clocks, which include Vulliamy, London No. 590, black marble, ormolu and bronze mounted time-piece, 10½” high, circa 1815, £18,000 and Vulliamy, London No. 1172 rare small rosewood mantel clock with engraved silvered dial, 8” (20cm) high, circa 1830 with an asking price in the region of £30,000.
Rather timely, the Clockmakers Company is also holding an exhibition of Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy clocks at the Science Museum in London, which opened last month for the duration of one year. Guest exhibitors and BBC Antiques Roadshow experts, Richard Price joins the fair bringing a variety of different ormolu and carriage clocks and Lennox Cato shows a sterling silver case holding a Tiffany minute repeater clock in red enamel and gilt decoration in Chinese Chinoiserie taste, raised on a tigers-eye base, £5,950.
Moreton-in-Marsh based Houlston specialises in early oak and textiles and is bringing to the fair a late- 17th century panel of woven silk brocade, circa 1685. Houlston is in the midst of researching this as it is very rare.
Architectural Heritage, from Taddington in Gloucestershire, adds a more contemporary textile fragment, Freedom by Alice Kettle (b.1961), 184cm high (backing 218cm high x 88cm wide), circa 1990s, £14,000 plus ARR at 4%. Lennox Cato has a very important 16th-century large rectangular embroidery panel of grotesque design, depicting Susanna with her loyal servants from the Old Testament. In the background, the two old judges are spying on her while in the vicinity of her large family house, Lowlands Dutch, circa 1530, £35,000 (now housed in a 21st century acrylic frame).
Oxfordshire Witney Antiques has a large carefully selected stock of early English embroidery and needlework samplers, some of which is destined for the stand at this new event. Textiles from further afield can be found with guest exhibitor Ian Shaw Tribal, amongst which is a very rare piece of hand-spun cotton Kente from the Ewe people of the Volta region of Ghana, £1,600. Woven on a four-inch strip loom, the natural dyed pieces are meticulously sewn together and a myriad of hand-sewn floating motifs add to the decoration, creating a sizeable piece that can be used in different ways in an interior.
Ian Shaw Tribal is also bringing a fine late 19th century water vessel from the Berber region of the Moroccan Atlas mountains, £1,800. Textile Antiques and Oriental Rug Shop also exhibit with CADA members for the first time.
Campaign furniture specialist Christopher Clarke Antiques from Stow-on-the-Wold has an early 19th century Georgian, mahogany campaign desk with washstand, with an asking price of £4,650 and a Georgian chair made to dismantle, circa 1820, £2,750. Furniture and interior accessories dealer, David Pickup Antiques joins the fair from Gloucestershire.
Jewellery specialist Howards Jewellers, based in Stratford-on-Avon, has a Tutti frutti brooch with carved sapphires and emeralds, set with diamonds, circa 1940; a necklace et with six pink sapphires, each centred on a hand carved green chalcedony flower and strung onto seed pearls, circa 1950. Howards Jewellers also brings silver, including a pair of fine early Victorian silver and cut glass comports, made by Paul Storr’s nephew, John Samuel Hunt in 1847.
Silver is also on the stand of Stephen Kalms Antiques. Amongst the items for sale from Gloucester based ceramics specialist David Scriven Antiques is an early Worcester porcelain coffee pot and cover painted in blue with the Gazebo pattern, 23.5cm high, circa 1755-60, £1,550. Other ceramics specialists joining the fair as guest exhibitors are Philip Carrol, James Miles and Andrew Muir. Guest dealers specialising in glass include M&D Moir and Mark J. West.
Wigs on the Green exhibited at the last CADA Fair, held at Compton Verney in November 2023, for the first time. This year they are joining forces with another guest exhibitor, The Limner Company and pooling their stock and expertise to provide visitors with an opportunity to purchase stunning silhouettes, high quality portrait miniatures and wearable jewels. Amongst the items to be found for sale are a beautiful collection of 18th and 19th century silhouette jewellery from a private collection assembled originally during the 1940s, with prices from £400 from Wigs On The Green. The Limner Company has an unusual ‘eye’ mourning ring for Dame Anne Rose, who died in 1809, £2,500. Although single eyes painted in miniature were popular in the late 18th century, they usually represented the eye of a living person. The eye in this miniature, with its heavy kohl liner, is more akin to those seen in ancient Egyptian art. As a wearable art form this ring is striking in its design but also truly unique.
Haynes Fine Art’s headquarters is in Broadway, Worcestershire and they have a gallery in Belgravia, London too. Amongst the paintings and sculpture to grace its stand at Cotswold Art Antiques Chelsea in March are Dinton Folly (now part of Dinton Castle), mixed media on paper, signed by John Piper, CH (British, 1903-1992) and Panorame d’Eze, Côte d’Azur, oil on canvas signed by Gabriel Deschamps (French 1919-2011).
Banbury and London-based Sarah Colegrave is hanging a small group of Chelsea related pictures by artists in the Whistler Circle. Walter Greaves, Paul Maitland, Joseph Pennell and others, amongst which is Shop Front, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea by Paul Fordyce Maitland (1863-1909), oil on panel, signed and inscribed with date on label on the reverse, 1907, £10,500. Maitland studied the National Art Training School down the road in South Kensington (now the Royal College of Art) and later with Theodore Roussel, who taught him as a personal pupil. Maitland’s obituary in The Times read: “The death of Paul Maitland removes one of the most poetical and sympathetic painters of London scenery, particularly of Kensington Gardens the Chelsea and Battersea reaches, and of the old redbrick houses which still remain in the region of Cheyne Walk.” In private life, Mr Maitland was a brilliant and scholarly talker on art and letters. Also for sale is an etching The Street, Chelsea Embankment by Theodore Casimir Roussel, RBA (1847-1926), £950 from Sarah Colegrave.
Strachan Fine Art from Bath and London brings an oil on canvas depicting one of London’s lost 19th-century churches: Holy Trinity Church, Gloucester Gardens, Bishop’s Road, Paddington by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1793-1864) with figures by the artist E.B., signed lower right H.S. and E.B. and dated 1858, priced at £16,000. Thomas Hosmer Shepherd is best known for his watercolour drawings of street views, especially in London. This oil painting was clearly an important commission and records a detail in the development of the land to the south of the old hamlet of Westbourne. Building around Westbourne Green had begun by the 17th century. It was still considered a beautiful, rural, place in 1820 and the Grand Junction Canal was a scenic enhancement.
Newman Fine Art from the Gloucestershire town of Painswick is exhibiting with a fine selection of British watercolour paintings, alongside Bink Fine Art from Cheltenham. Other fine art dealers joining the fair are Freya Mitton, Burlington and Kaye Michie Fine Art. Another CADA member, Worcestershire shipping specialist Simon Hall Limited, will be on-site to provide packaging and storage facilities and to deliver customer’s purchases far and wide, as required.
Other dealers joining this event include Mark Goodger Antiques, Hickmet Fine Arts, Garret & Hurst Sculpture, Jacksons Antique, Lesley Blackford, Timothy Millett Ltd, Hansord, T. Robert and S&S Timms Antiques.
Alex Puddy, Chairman of The Cotswold Art & Antiques Dealers’ Association said, “We are proud to bring the Cotswolds to London in March 2025 and are delighted to be able to exhibit at Chelsea Old Town Hall that has seen antiques fairs held there for over five decades. Many of our members exhibit in London and internationally, but bringing them together in the capital will illustrate what a diverse range of impressive art and antiques can be found in the Cotswolds.”