Convention 2007 - Our Latest Convention Success!
Our seventh annual convention, was thoroughly enjoyed by those that attended.
For the first time we left the M25 and the London airports to hold the annual
event near Gloucester in the west country. We chose the Holiday Inn between
Gloucester and Cheltenham as the venue and the Sheridan Suite proved to be
an almost perfect location.
On Saturday we held a program of presentations and club activities and ended
with a hot buffet in the evening. Chris Hipkiss was once again a very entertaining
MC, doorman, sound engineer and (sometimes) comedian. Sunday, as usual, was
a table top sale with member/dealers offering thousands of bottles for sale.
Angie Holmes, Chair of the UK Chapter opened the meeting, welcoming almost
30 members and partners, including eight for the first time. Angie then read
a message from Jay Kaplan, IPBA President who was unable to attend the convention
as planned.
Members were shown a wonderful slide presentation originally made by Helen
Farnsworth, the IPBA Archivist, at the IPBA Atlanta convention 
earlier
this year. Entitled "In the Perfume Shop" the talk described the
early days of retailing perfume with examples of 'Point of Purchase' marketing
and store displays. Included were many photographs of pins, cards and factices.
Chris Hipkiss gamely read the script which included many difficult French
names.
Penny
and Terry Emmony then gave a report on the judging process for the Fragrance
Foundation UK's 2007 FiFi awards and the charity award dinner (in aid of the
Teenage Cancer Trust) held at The Dorchester in April.
After a brief break for lunch, the day continued with a session that has been
popular at all of the US conventions - 'Treasures Found'. Using a webcam,
mystery bottles are displayed to a panel of experts (in our case, the whole
group!) for them to identify or provide more details. Several members offered
their bottles and we were successful in solving most of the mysteries. A far-eastern
bottle from Penny left many people speechless however.....
The workshop to build an archive of Yardley bottles and ephemera didn't quite
work out as a plenary session but did lead to a large and impressive display
of items from member's collections. Lornamead, the new owners of the Yardley
name, kindly sent some rare bottles and photographs from their archive to
start us off. A section has been added to this web site to show photographs
of the collection.
(We plan to choose another British perfumer next year and continue to eventually
build a comprehensive record of UK perfume houses.)
To
complement the English theme of the Yardley session and also because it was
Remembrance Sunday, Paula Sedgwick put together a lovely display of Californian
Poppy bottles from her collection, decorated appropriately with poppy petals.
Penny also displayed some perfume bracelets from her collection.
We were very happy to welcome George Stam and his business partner Christian
Savioz from Switzerland to the convention and George's talk was the highlight
of Saturday's events. George, who is the IPBA International Vice President
gave his acclaimed presentation to the IPBA Atlanta "Gone with the Wind"
convention earlier this year entitled "Frankly my dear, I prefer Baccarat".
The talk was illustrated with photographs of many beautiful and valuable bottles.
Saturday's events ended with a buffet meal in the other half of the Sheridan
suite after which members retired to the bar.
Sunday's sale proved to be interesting with a variety of dealers present,
four for the first time. Bottles on offer ranged from very inexpensive 'entry
level' to valuable and expensive collectors items, as well as giant display
bottles and plenty of ephemera. One group was even spotted playing 'cards'
on the floor of the sale room.
The
number of members of the public coming into the showroom was disappointing,
given the considerable amount of effort that had been put into publicising
the event, both locally and by flyers given out at various recent shows. However,
we were pleased that several members of the BCCS came to the sale with some
even joining the UK Chapter!
The raffle was an entertaining part of Sunday - we had many, many prizes -
all donated by members - and competition for some prizes was fierce. We raised
almost £200 for club funds, so thank you very much to
all those who donated and to those who bought so many tickets.
Photograph Album»
