The National Crafts Fair

The next major event in my early years of being a professional artist came again out of the blue.

I had heard of a trade show for crafts at Harrogate that lasted about 3 days. Joan and I decided to take a risk and pay for a stand which was quite an expensive outlay. We had a caravan in those days so I used that on a site nearby.

The hopes were to meet gallery owners and persuade them to buy my work. I stood there for 12 hours a day for 3 days with a smile on my face that gradually turned into a rictus, so when I visit exhibitions nowadays I really know what it is like when I see stall holders looking hopeful as people approach then disintegrate as they pass by. Anyway although I didn’t actually sell anything I did get galleries asking me if I could paint scenes from their own areas that they would hang on their walls. I was quite prepared to try this but then Anthony James landed on my stand, and I worked with him for the next 20 years.

He was the director of The National Crafts Association and was planning on taking artists and other professional crafts people to start a large craft fair on the island of Jersey, and later Guernsey. He said if I could paint watercolours of the islands they would go down really well.

But first I had to show my paintings to a select panel of his colleagues. That went ok and then Joan and I had to  decide if we could afford the stand fees and the cost of getting our car full of pictures across to the island and a week’s hotel bills. Luckily I had a friendly bank manager who said it would be silly not to go and offered me a generous overdraft.

So the next few weeks were spent solely painting scenes of Jersey from old photos I could find at the library, (No internet then). We borrowed an exhibition stand from the Probation Service where Joan worked, packed the car and drove down to Poole and onto the ferry. We went straight to the Fort Regent Exhibition centre and set up as much as we could before then searching for our hotel.

Hours before the  evening preview exhibition we thought we were ready until Anthony came round inspecting everything to make sure we all looked professional. When he saw we had no lighting we were dispatched down into St. Helier to buy lights for the stand. He was right of course as the lights really showed off the paintings. When all the other stands were set up the hall looked really great and we were ready to go.

It was a Monday night and you could hear the crowds of people coming through the main doors into the building. Now Joan had never been involved in selling my paintings and she was very nervous. She stood there smack in front of the stand with a strange smile on her face, remember we had invested a lot of money into this venture. So I whispered to her to go get a coffee and wander round the rest of the stands for half an hour. When she came back there was quite a crowd around the stand and all of a sudden people started buying my paintings (all originals as we hadn’t any prints). After that she was fine and even took over while I went for a coffee.

In those opening 3 hours we sold half of our stock. By Wednesday I had sold out and there was still four days to go. So I found an art shop and bought materials and commenced to paint while sitting in front of the stand. As fast as I painted one it sold, in fact one man bought one that was only half done, he came back at the end of the week to pick the finished painting up. And that continued for the next 20 years or so.