With 269 exhibitors from 20 countries, it’s not easy to stand out at TEFAF. As befits Europe’s premier art fair, everyone brings their best stuff, so how do participants get the edge? Answer: they create beautiful stands.
One that stood out was Shapero Rare Books. Bernard Shapero wouldn’t tell me how much he’d invested in the stand, but as you can see it’s not unlike a stage set for a West End play – design brief: create a highly affluent collectors’ home.
Designed by Jamieson Innes, the director of JSI Design Ltd, in collaboration with Bernard, the stand will be used by the company at antiques and art fairs worldwide
Jamieson Innes, who has worked with many top brands, including Rolls Royce, Land Rover and Selfridges, said:
‘The brief [from Bernard] was to create a holistic approach to the curation of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’, shown to their best advantage in a contemporary way, which I believe we have achieved.’
Bernard agrees:
‘One of the challenges of fairs is to stand out – to hit the wow button, so to speak – and Jamieson has certainly done that! Indeed, he’s delivered something that’s not only eye-catchingly beautiful and innovative, but also engaging and immersive – the perfect balance of practicality with aesthetic excellence.’
But enough about the stand, what of the merchandise? The first thing you notice is a suite of Warhol portraits, with one of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands receiving pride of place – Maastricht is in her kingdom after all!! Made in 1985, it is a unique trial proof in an edition of 30, and ones from Warhol’s Reigning Queens series, which also featured Queen Elizabeth II. Beatrix, now 78, never met Warhol, who used an official photograph for the print, and it is not known if she owns a copy herself.
Shapero are also offering a complete collection of John Gould’s magnificent bird books. Gould was one of the most distinguished ornithologists of the 19th Century, producing books of unrivalled beauty and scholarship. A single edition of these luxurious books would comfortably occupy any library as its centrepiece; the complete collection – 12 folio works in 44 volumes (most bound in full or half green morocco) with 3158 fine hand-coloured lithographs – is being offered for £1.5m.
Other goodies include Guillaume Durandus’ Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, the first major piece of writing by a known and named author to be published; John James Audubon’s last great work, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, and the first colour-plate book to depict the natural history of Americas, Mark Catesby’s The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands: Containing the Figures of Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, Insects and Plants’.
By Jenny Lowlander
Stand 231 TEFAF 11th – 20th March Maastricht
www.tefaf.com
