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Our dealer of the month Chin fine paintings and prints
Posted by Iain Brunt with Chin on 10/01/2023
I have always had an interest in antique books & antique art since I was young. I started dealing in Fine art & Antique Book dealing when I graduated in Philosophy at King’s College, London in 1974 & begun teaching.
I found a bedsit in Notting Hill Gate a stone’s throw away from Portobello Rd. I then learnt that I could supplement my rent & living expenses by dealing in antique books & antique pictures. I took four stalls under the big tent three quarters of the way down Portobello Rd every Saturday & begun selling second hand antique books to begin with & then antique prints, antique drawings & antique watercolours as & when I find them, buying from antique dealers in the market. It was a good place to meet up with collectors & dealers all over the world; many of them also took up stands to sell. A few of them have kept in contact & still doing business with me down the years. Whilst down that end of Portobello I must mention that a youngish French couple turned up early one morning & came to ask me where the toilets were & where to get a breakfast. I naturally pointed out to them how to get to the toilets, which were literally across the road. And I bought them breakfast.
They were so grateful that when they left at the end of the day they came up & gave me bits & pieces of antiques & a collection of antique 18c copper plates of French/Italian erotic subjects! I had a few sets printed by the V & A, put a set up at Parker Auctions last year & it fetched £800.00! I am now going to make a limited edition set of, say, 900 copies & ask £900.00 a set for them. I can also publish a book of them selling at, say, £20.00 a copy. Pity is that I cannot now trace the French couple to thank them. And I hope no one now come to claim that they are the French couple! They will get a knock on the head.
After nine years I moved up Portobello Rd & took a stand at a big corner shop at the junction of Elgin Crescent. I was in the position then of seriously buying & selling antique drawings & antique paintings & meeting up with & making good clients. I here met up with a most important client. He was Joseph Galea-Naudi from Malta, the curator of St. John’s Co-Cathedral, the most important in Malta, they have 400 other cathedrals & churches.
He bought from me as a Collector, invited me over to stay with him in Malta many times & I always brought him Old Master Paintings, antique drawings & antique prints which he hardly turned down. He also introduced me to his friend who owned many hotels in Gozo & I was chosen to value his collection of Old Master paintings & antique drawings. It was about this time that I must have come across Iain Brunt who now runs Antiques.co.uk. Am happy that he started this company & has moved on from strength to strength.
I then moved on to Pembridge Villas at the top of Portobello Rd. & established a gallery. I started representing artists like the well-known Sicilian-Italian artist Lorenzo Maria Bottari & organised exhibitions for him with the help of Brian Sewell, the famous art critic who, sadly, has passed on. I finally moved on to organise Book & Ephemera Fairs at the Royal National Hotel, Bloomsbury for about eight years, giving myself a stand to exhibit & sell my art works. I finally moved online, have a presence of about 1,200 items of stock at eBay at any one time. I kept running into Antiques.Co.Uk online whenever I searched for items or come across their advertisements. I got in touch with Iain Brunt who very kindly loaded up my eBay items at his site & am most grateful to him. I do the occasional Fairs & I give out the cards of Antiques.co.uk for Iain.
I have bought extensively at auctions online, do the research & list them at eBay & they sell quite well. I make a hit or two by picking up, say, 17c oil paintings for £4-500.00, put them at auction houses & they fetch £10-17,000.00. But one has got to know what one is doing.