First Antique and Collectors Fair
by Ralph Kratzer (TFR Secretary)
On Friday 15th February 2013, I visited the first Antique and Collectors Fair, which held from 10am to 4pm in the venerable walls of Chateau Lambousa in Lapta.
The first face I recognized was of a year-long fri
end, Nick Vye, who had one of the stands at the fair. He showed some bits and pieces for sale on his table, telling me some of them may be 100 years old or more. One of his exhibits had a special interest for me because the oil painting showed a landscape of a beautiful mountain range in the Bavarian Alps which echoed memories of homeland feelings in my heart.
Nick is an extraordinary person and, as I knew, he is famous as an expert in th
e field of the “power of crystals” and has a considerable collection of them, I promised to visit him in the next few days to write an article about him and his preference for crystals.
The next guy I spoke to was Ian Long, the organizer of the fair.
Being asked what the idea behind the fair was, he told me that he wanted to create something different to the flea markets, tabletop and car-boot sale events which had become more and more numerous in North Cyprus over the last few years.
Antique and Collectors fairs are very popular in the UK, Germany and other European countries and Ian wanted to transfer this beautiful idea t
o our island.
The fair will take place on a regular basis in the future, they are being planned for one every month on a Friday and they will be advertised through posters and leaflets and on the TFR website. For further details and table reservations call Ian (0533 873 03 01).
By the way, talking with Ian about these kinds of fairs in the UK and Germany, he mentioned one of the biggest exhibitions taking place every year is in Dortmund in the middle of Germany and he told me that he had lived in Dortmund for 26 years, first as a soldier of the British Army and later privately working in the business of newsprint for the “Dortmund Globe”. He was married to a German lady as well.
How small this world is! The more people I meet, the more I recognize that we have so many things in common and it doesn´t matter where we come from. This is the positive way of “globalization”!
