Anne Swift is a longtime London lace dealer with a stall on the famous Portobello Road (Street Stall 1 Portobello Road – corner of Portobello Road and Westbourne Grove.) She is also the seller EASTAYTON on Ebay, and it is well worth the wait for her excellent listings. LaceNews is delighted to have the opportunity to talk to Anne. At least it started with Anne, but soon became obvious that lace is a passion of the entire Swift family.

The Swift Family, being interviewed by Oshikiri Moe for the Japanese TV show ‘Eigo de Shaberanaito’ three years ago. The name roughly translates to ‘You have to speak English’. The show is based on the experiences of the interviewer living with a family with an interesting job for a weekend, usually in the US or UK. Here they were highlighting the antiques business.

The Portobello stall (at right), early before the crowds come.

LaceNews: You have been dealing in wonderful lace for years. When and how did you get started?
Anne: I started around 30 years ago in the Portobello Road antiques market. I started by selling whitework and gradually drifted into laces.  In that time I have sold at lace fairs in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, Finland, Czech Republic and the Oidfa Fair in Nottingham. In most cases with the help of my husband, Philip. In future I may go to the next 2012 Oidfa fair in Caen.

LaceNews: Portobello Road is an amazing institution, what is it like having a stall there?
Anne: I have an outside stall in the Portobello Road – lovely in Summer, not so nice in Winter. Now my son is learning the business and we take him, and his wife, there on Saturday morning and Philip picks them up later in the day. Very often they make a loss, especially in Winter but our son is determined to carry on. He graduated in Ancient History and Japanese at UCL and SOAS, London, but there is no job open to him at present. He did teach first year anthropology at UCL , but this work finished with the University cut-backs – hence his market work.

LaceNews: You told me that your son just got married?
Anne: Our son Phil got married recently here in London to a lovely Japanese girl. She graduated from the English Royal College of Art and has a website.(http://www.chisatotamabayashi.com/ the Shadows Interlacing piece is based on lace)   She has exhibited in the Victoria and Albert museum. There were ca 120 guests who flew in from Spain, Germany, Belgium and Japan and of course from all parts of England.

LaceNews: Things have changed so much over the years. How has the Internet affected your business?
Anne: With the help of Philip I try to sell laces on Ebay. In my last offering I advertised a wedding veil, (“buy it now”),  which sold immediately. Unfortunately Philip mixed up Dollars with Euros and sold it for less than I paid for it!  C’est la vie.
Philip finds it hard work – lots of pictures etc. Hence we only “do” about 10 items a month. My son is setting up a website , with the help of a friend, but so far I am not pleased with the result.

LaceNews: Do you see any current trends in the antique lace market? You mentioned the Japanese film on your business, which is unusual publicity! Is much high quality lace now going to Japan?
Anne: I cannot say which pieces are in demand. It depends on the country of the buyer. The Japanese are not big buyers, although there are some lace collectors there.

LaceNews: Do you remember a particularly favorite piece in all your years as a dealer?
Anne: I have sold so many fine pieces that the question is difficult to answer.
Here are a couple of pictures showing a lovely English Bucks Point christening gown and a Nottingham machine lace curtain , which I displayed during the Nottingham OIDFA lace fair. I sold the curtain to the new lace museum in Calais. The gown I am not selling.  The curtain depicts the life of Joan of Arc – it is 5 yards x 1.5 yards . A beautiful piece. I also sold another large Nottingham curtain depicting a peacock and a woman from a fable by Jean de la Fontaine. This latter one is on permanent display, see photo.
The Calais museum is huge, they have a working Leavers machine; made in England in the early 19th century. Typically we have no lace museum in Nottingham and sold all our Leavers machines. The expertise is lost forever. We visited the museum a few weeks ago. Meanwhile the French machine lace industry is thriving.

LaceNews: Wonderful pieces, and the machine lace is very impressive! We will definitely have to do a profile of the Calais museum in the near future.  Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk, and don’t give up on the Web site!  These things take time and patience.

You can contact Swift Antique Lace at AntiqueLaces@aol.com.
And, you can visit the new website at antique-laces.com