Pick of the week
As well as works by Joe Tilson for sale at the London Original Print Fair, March 21–24, such as the soft-ground etching illustrated here last week, there will also be a special presentation to the artist, who died, aged 95, in November. One of his final images, again with Cristea Roberts (Art Market, March 13), was the hand-coloured inkjet, screenprint and carborundum The Stones of Venice, Il campanile di San Francesco della Vigna Diptych, the last of a series that he had been working on for some years.
Since 1987, a couple of years after its foundation, the organiser of the fair has been Helen Rosslyn, who, as Countess of Rosslyn, was also the moving force behind a £10 million conservation programme for the family’s 15thcentury Rosslyn Chapel south of Edinburgh. Already an admirer of Tilson, when she saw an award-winning stained-glass piece by him at the RA in 2019, she commissioned a replacement for an empty window at the chapel. This was made with Mark Bambrough, conservator with the Scottish Glass Studio, and in its strong blue, white and red design (above), it has the feel of the glorious medieval glass in French cathedrals, at the same time nodding to the flag of St Andrew and sitting well with good, surviving Victorian windows.
The London Original Print Fair now seems well situated at Somerset House; meanwhile, after eight successful years at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, followed by three at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, there are no suitable dates for the Cotswold Art & Antiques Dealers’ Association Fair (CADA) during Compton Verney’s 20th-anniversary year. The next would normally have taken place in November and it is already too late this year to find another venue to showcase its members from the five counties that make up the Cotswolds, so CADA will venture into London and 2025 for the next fair (March 20–23).
Alex Puddy, chairman of CADA, has a positive message: ‘We are proud to bring the Cotswolds to London and are delighted to be able to exhibit at Chelsea Old Town Hall, which has hosted antiques fairs for more than five decades. Many of our individual 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.’