The organiser of Dublin's major antiques fairs has professed himself unconcerned about a new rival event staged by an English company which opens in the Burlington Hotel today. Bailey Fairs is based in Essex and holds fairs at a variety of centres around England.
The company's most obvious competition in the Republic is Mr Louis O'Sullivan, who has run fairs in Dublin since 1966, including the annual Irish Antique Dealers' Fair scheduled for next month at the RDS.
A doyen of the Irish antique trade, Mr O'Sullivan said yesterday he was not in the slightest bit worried that Bailey Fairs had decided to run a five-day fair in Dublin. "We'll survive very well. We're a well-established organisation. Everyone knows when our fairs take place and that they are very successful." However, he did express some anxiety that "the market here is small enough without trying to split it down the middle". Mr O'Sullivan also pointed out that only two members of the Irish Antique Dealers' Association, Patrick Fitzgerald of Upper Court Manor, Co Kilkenny, and Kevin Chellar of Timepiece in Dublin, had taken stands at the Burlington fair where more than two-thirds of the 28 exhibitors will be dealers from Britain.
The president of the IADA, Mr George Stacpoole, said he had been sent a fax by Bailey Fairs last Friday offering the association a stand at the event, "but we couldn't begin to organise anything at such short notice".
In the Burlington Hotel as exhibitors prepared their stands, Bailey Fairs director Ms Ingrid Nilson said her company organised about 25 fairs annually and planned to include Dublin in that number from now on.
RTE news reader Anne Doyle will officially open the fair today when she will be invited to try on a pair of shoes worn by Marilyn Monroe. The film actress's feet were a size four, so as Ms Nilson commented, Ms Doyle may find herself "in a Cinderella situation". Possibly a bit like the fair itself.