Textile Antiques’ stand at LARTA showing sold crewelwork panels (on the left and right sides) and a now sold flamestitch on the back wall. Textile Antiques’ Joseph Sullivan made sales in a price region of up to £14,000.
New exhibitor Joseph Sullivan of Textile Antiques (who previously spent 20 years with textile doyenne Peta Smyth before setting up on his own when she retired last year) had sales ranging from several hundred pounds up to £14,000.
Sullivan added: “It has certainly been worth me exhibiting for the first time. I had a very good first day and was able to sell a pair of crewelwork panels - crewelwork is very popular at the moment - a tapestry and a flamestitch.”
LARTA organiser Aaron Nejad reported good first-day sales including a c.1920 fine antique silk Souf Kashan rug which sold for £9000 to an overseas buyer and a late 19th century blue Oushak carpet to an interior decorator visiting with her client, priced at £5800.
A c.1920 fine antique silk Souf Kashan rug, £9000 at Aaron Nejad.
The 15 LARTA exhibitors were particularly pleased to meet new clients at the event.
Michael Hezaveh of the Oriental Rug Shop in Sheffield said: “Everybody, bar one, I’ve sold to this year was new. The cherry on the cake was the interior designer Rita Konig, to whom I sold a few jajims. One couple I met at LARTA last year came to see me with their whole architectural plan for their house in Berkshire, where they probably require seven or eight rugs, so we will be visiting them in a couple of months.”
Phil Bell of Phil Bell Antique Oriental Rugs said: “I always enjoy this fair - it is a high point of the year for me. I had a number of people from Leeds and the Midlands looking to refurbish their houses and I also bought from fellow exhibitors.”
German exhibitor Markus Voigt’s sales were almost exclusively to the trade and interior designers. But one major private sale for him was a silk and wool tapestry fragment from the Life of Scipio series, which had an asking price of £4800 and sold to a couple who visited on the opening day and returned at the weekend to purchase it.
Voigt also noted interest via the LARTA Online website where he “had an enquiry from someone in the US I hadn’t heard from for 15 years - a re-established contact”.
LARTA Online continues for the next six months at larta.net and the in-person event returns next January (21-26) to Battersea’s Evolution alongside The Decorative Fair.
