#Decorative #Fair #returns #October #Antique #Collecting
The Decorative Fair returns to Battersea Park for its Autumn edition from October 3 to 8, 2023.
The Fair’s organisers said that the 135 exhibitors have an eye for the most exciting and unusual objects and works of art, and the many dealers in decorative antiques and 20th-century design understand what is currently in vogue.
A special foyer display, featuring items for sale from exhibitors, goes ‘Rococo’ this October, showcasing designs and works of art in this light-hearted, ornate form of decoration that originated in early 1700s France. Anti-classical in style, rococo features exuberant swirling scrolls and elaborate, usually asymmetrical, naturalistic outlines, including amorphous, organic, shell-like shapes, referred to as ‘rocaille’ in France – hence the term Rococo.
Continental Europe went wild for rococo in architecture and interiors: at Versailles, in Venetian palazzos, Sanssouci at Potsdam, Charlottenberg in Berlin, at castles in Austria and Scandinavia. In England, rococo was expressed through the decorative arts and applied ornamentation, with Claydon House, Buckinghamshire a splendid example.
Chippendale combined it with chinoiserie and gothick elements creating a very British iteration. Rococo has had revivals: in the early 19th century, and again in the late 19th and early 20th century when it was often termed Louis Quinze style. Recently it’s been on view in TV series like Marie Antoinette and Queen Charlotte, and last year The Wallace Collection’s Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts demonstrated the animator’s interest in, as well as the fun of rococo design. Now, rococo is reappearing in this season’s wallpaper and fabric launches – so the Fair celebrates this playful and endearing style.
The Fair Organisers are delighted to welcome a number of brilliant new exhibitors this Autumn:
• Spitalfields House (London): country house grandeur on a townhouse scale: an erudite collection of 18th and 19th-century English and continental furniture and works of art
• The Swedish Rug Company (London): Scandinavian folk art rugs, flatweave runners and larger rugs dating from the 1900s to the 1970s
• Schmid McDonagh (London): dealers in 20th and 21st-century objects, furniture, jewellery, art, design and books
• King & Country (London): specialist in antique Louis Vuitton luggage & luxury travel accessories, unusual decorative items & rare collectables for the study, games room & bar
• Flora Black (London): decorative selection of vintage and antique vases, ornament and art
• Han Collection, Museum Street, London: exceptional Korean contemporary art & antiques
• Lawrence Prentice Art & Antiques, Old Spitalfields Market and The Old Cinema Chiswick: British painting and sculpture of the 1950s to 70s; folk art and studio ceramics
These join the many regular participants who show at all three Fairs each year, plus some well-loved dealers making a return, bringing exhibitor numbers to 135 across the ground floor.
Arriving at Battersea up on the mezzanine for the first time is Tribal Art London, the long-established and only UK event for collectors and admirers of original tribal and ethnographic art and artefacts. Moving from their previous home in The Mall, Tribal Art London adds a unique dimension to the offering at Evolution London during The Decorative Fair.
