Exhausting but exhilarating

The art and antiques business is as unpredictable as an English summer. And it is not only the works of art that confound market rules and crystal balls. The fairs that serve as the dealers’ collective showcase similarly defy expectations. Who would have thought, for instance, that fair entrepreneur David Lester could put up a tent on a forlorn intersection in West Palm Beach – not only on the wrong side of the tracks but just feet away from them – and find himself with one of the most glamorous and successful art fairs in America? Or that a charmless convention centre on the ring-road around Maastricht – a town no one had heard of until the eponymous treaty – could become the venue for quite simply the best art and antiques fair in the world?

This year’s European Fine Art Fair – or TEFAF Maastricht as its organisers now insist on calling it – has just opened its oversized doors (they close on Sunday 23 March).