Escape to the Chateau
Even among a great collection of high-end art and antiques – it seems there are still bargains to be had
IT’S not every day you get to shop for antiques in a historic chateau, in the footsteps of a real-life king and queen. Had we been there a day earlier, I might have been able to ask them for some tips on how to furnish my own palace.
And the last thing you expect when visiting a fair so prestigious that it attracts royalty, is to be given a piece for free by a dealer, but both occurred on our recent trip to Belgium.
The fair was in Dinant, an hour by car from Brussels on the E411, but we stayed nearby at the imposing Castel de Pont-à-Lesse, in the countryside, surrounded by lush forests and lofty limestone crags.
The fair was at Château de Deulin, built in 1758 by Guillaume Joseph de Harlez, and completed by his son Simon-Joseph in 1770. It is now home to its current owner Stefan Harlez, his four sons and their families who share responsibilities for running the place.
Stefan’s uncle gave him custodianship in 1976 but in the face of the crippling cost of renovation, he turned to the region for assistance. The cost was €700,000, but thanks to subsidies, he paid only three per cent of the bill. We reckoned on €1 equalled £1 on our visit which at the time was near enough.
Stefan says his ancestors were English, one of them an 11th-century duke of Oxford, while Sir William Harle made his fortune exporting wine from Burgundy through the rivers and canals to Belgium. There might also be a link to London’s Harley Street.
However, as a Catholic, William was forced to flee England as a result of religious conflict and settled in Belgium, where his name was “Wallooned” by adding the “z”.
Stefan and his son and daughterin-law, Stéphane and Dominique, sell 17th and 18th-century antique furniture and works of art from the property, while another son, Simon, sells Scandinavian and Italian furniture in the orangery.
Visits are by appointment, but on four occasions each year, the estate is thrown open for public events, two of which are devoted to antiques.
We were at “Le Salon des Antiquaires”, held on the first and second weekends in October and, in contrast to the lowly €5 entrance fee (or free by invitation), the fair offers some of the finest antiques and works of art you’re ever likely to see. A couple of thousand visitors attend.
Sixteen international dealers take stands that fill the entire ground floor of the chateau, some taking over an entire room, while others spill out into the surrounding estate buildings, the biggest and grandest of which was where the pigs were once kept.
The King and Queen of Belgium spent two hours at the fair, and it was in this stone piggery building, with its towering ceiling, that they purchased a painting, but the dealer who sold it was coy. While he was happy to point out the charming little oil on canvas of a landscape, he declined to give the name of the artist or, naturally enough, disclose the price paid.
Incongruously, an Austin J40 pedal car was on sale in another area of the building. It would have rolled off the production line in 1949, in a purpose-built factory in Bargoed, South Wales, set up with government funding to create jobs for miners disabled by ‘the dust’ – pneumoconiosis.
With room for a child-sized driver and passenger, the car resembled the very adult Austin Devon and had an opening bonnet and boot, a dummy 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.