ANTIQUES FAIR Escape to the Chateau
Fine art and antiques now change hands where once the pigs were kept at Château de Deulin
The fine walnut kneehole writing desk and Queen Anne toilet mirror, each circa 1690-1710 engine, and working horn and lights. Originally available only through Selfridges in London, or direct from the factory, just 32,000 were made between 1949 and 1971.
The roadster retailed at £20, which was a fifth of a working man’s annual salary back in the day. This one was priced at €4,000 with the well known Antwerp dealer, Frank van Laer.
Another hint of home was in the grand salon de musée, where Spa dealer Arnaud Despa was showing, fittingly, a collection of Spa ware among other fine antiques. UK collectors have the poor man’s equivalent: Mauchline ware.
The latter were small sycamore wood boxes and trinkets decorated with transfer prints or photographs of popular tourist destinations and take their name from the Ayrshire town where they were made in the late 18th century. Examples can be purchased for a few pounds, with rare examples fetching barely three figures.
In contrast, Spa ware sells for prices between €500 and €5,000 depending on quality, size and condition. The Walloon town of the same name in the Ardennes region in eastern Belgium is known as the original spa, its healing cold mineral springs attracting tourists since the Romans.
A tourist industry built up there naturally and the boxes, made in the 18th and 19th centuries from local timber, supplemented the production of decorative walking sticks made to aid the infirm visitors.
Much finer than the Scottish boxes, they were decorated with fine penwork images done with Indian ink or beautifully detailed painted scenes depicting views around the town. They are quite delightful.
There was no shortage of English furniture. Filip de Cock from Herzele in East Flanders was showing a good pair of Georgian wine coolers, circa 1780 (€25,000), a fine walnut kneehole writing desk, circa 1690-1710 (€25,000), and a Queen Anne toilet mirror from the same period (€5,900).
Dealer Luc Decruyenaere had suffered a break-in at his Brussels shop and all his stock was stolen. It had taken him five years to recover, but there was no sign of the trauma with his impressive display of ancient Greek Attic vases and early English silver tableware.
And then came my emotional moment. Having admired a charming little hard-paste porcelain watch holder in a glass display cabinet on his stand, I asked the dealer if I could afford it.
It was my way of learning its likely cost. The dealer, Jean Bertot from nearby Namur, looked it over but found no price label and suddenly handed it to me, saying it was mine.
Despite my protestations, he refused to take it back, and it now sits by my desk, holding my grandmother’s fob watch.