Some of Australia's best known antique dealers will be in Hobart this weekend to showcase their treasures at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's historic Narryna Heritage Museum.
Originally housing a hospital and then the VDL Folk Museum, the Georgian-style homestead has been cleared out for the first time in 65 years for the occasion.
While two rooms have retained their usual antique displays, the rest of the gallery has been filled by the wares of the antiques industry's oldest and youngest talents.
One of them is a 50-year veteran of jewellery dealing, Anne Schofield.
Arguably Australia's most famous collector, she's known around the world, but it's her first time exhibiting in Tasmania.
While she wanted to appeal to young people, she said the rarer pieces on display, such as a suite of 18-carat yellow gold jewellery crafted in the 1800s, were priced to up to $30,000.
"It's very interesting to be among my colleagues in the business," she said.
"When you're stuck in the shop all the time you just don't get to travel about as much."
Ms Schofield still directs the Sydney jewellery store she opened in Woollahra five decades ago, and says while things have changed, some things, including her inspiration, remain the same.
"I've got lots of the jewellery on Instagram, and I've got a lot of followers now. That's quite a new thing for me," she said.
"But I think it's incredibly interesting for them to actually come in. I could never understand how anybody could buy jewellery on the internet without looking at it.
"Because everyone's different. Earrings suit a particular type of face, fingers are all different sizes. It's really such a personal item. It is the item which lives on the body."
Ms Schofield said antique items such as stick pins made in the early 1900s to the end of World War II were back in vogue.
"They still look marvellous — chaps wear them in Sydney in their lapels, because they're tiny and they're decorative and they're interesting."
Australia's youngest art dealer has taken over the servants' quarters at Narryna House.
Miles Davis-Kielar started collecting coins and then silver from the age of eight, before he started his fledgling antique business at 14.
"I had so much stuff and very little money, so I actually had to start selling things," he recalled.
"So my collection became my stock and I progressed from there."
He opened his first shop in Launceston's St John's Street at the age of 18.
Now, after several years in London he's returned, to Hobart.
"There are wonderful things in Hobart and Tasmania generally," he said.
"I went to the north of the state earlier this month and I found a wonderful 17th century Charles II coconut cup. It's incredibly rare."
Modern works included
The art show will also include contemporary works, including from international video artist Andrew Hazewinkel, who said he'd not shown his work "in this type of setting" before.
His work, Warrior A, Warrior B, will be showcased in Narryna's padded drawing room, and features the 2,500-year-old Riace Bronzes, discovered by a dentist off in the ocean off the Italian coast in the 1970s.
The figures spent 30 years upright in a museum, but Mr Hazewinkel's work showcases them in vision, lying on their backs in a work shop.
"The idea that how the figure is presented, not just how the figure is made, that's what the art historians are particularly interested in.".
"But for me it's how we can interpret the figure to show its changing positions. So in this instance as they were always intended to be vertical, to articulate them in the horizontal, more vulnerable hospital-like setting."
Hobart-based dealer and gallery owner Michael Bugelli brought Mr Hazewinkel and his works to Narryna as a prelude to a full show by the artist in Hobart in January.
Mr Bugelli said it was an exciting time to be working in Hobart's contemporary art scene.
"It has a history of being international, which it is returning to now," he said.
"We want to present the best contemporary art with antiques, and we have some of the leading conceptual artists in Australia at the moment.
"We're taking it slow. We're very serious about it, but we have a long-term plan to belong to the city."
