Marking the end of this Indian summer and heralding the new season, The Autumn Decorative Fair opened its doors earlier this week in Battersea Park for a six-day-stay until the end of the weekend. With more than 140 exhibitors, delights ranged from fine furniture to folk art, and a foyer full of original fairground and circus artefacts. I opted for a truly vintage look and wore one of my best one-offs: a jewel-green dress, from the '40s, with jazzy floral inserts. It is a real hand-made piece and comes with a lovely history. Purchased from a girlfriend, it was made by her great-grandmother who took on the mantle of 'family' dress-maker. Happily it fits me - as if I was one of the family! And it is accessorised with my charming Hong Kong '50s clutch, bought earlier this summer at Lewes Antiques Centre. My dress was remarked upon by several of the exhibitors including Josephine Ryan, whose pair of magnificent 19th century Italian 'Wonderland' chairs, would be worthy of any Alice, predisposed to curlicues. Best chairs in show! The dress also looked rather glamorous against the rough-hewn hessian, larger-than-life figures at La Place Antiques, which also had some lovely Gustavian chairs. Desirable fare included a 'men-sized' sofa at Drennan, where big is always beautiful; the coral and cabinets at Martin D. Johnson Antiques; the pretty French bateau at Covelli Tennant; and Gallic furniture aplenty at French Country Living Antiques; and pretty horses - the larger one, an exceptional example from the 1880s, by Orton & Spooner. I went back to the fair on Sunday in my casuals: a Zara knit and Gap skinnies and found a Victorian chair, with Hungarian folk pieces and edged in orange, to try out at Covelli Tennant. And the craziest bag - a crayfish-shaped basket from '50s America - at Katheleys. Truly out there... in the ocean of eccentricity!
January is a fine month for inspiration: to be found on every stand at the Winter Decorative Fair which opened on Tuesday in Battersea Park. The thrice-yearly event gathers the great and the good for an extravaganza of extraordinary covetables - from the skeleton of a Bengal tigress, lightly gilded and cased in a former V&A vitrine (stand 118) where Alex MacArthur's theme is 'gold, bling and bone', to Drennan Edinburgh's ornately carved early Victorian table, topped by the loveliest Irish green marble, from Connemara - a real showpiece at stand 12. The six-day shopping event closes on Sunday evening. You can always pencil in your next spree, for Spring, towards the end of April. Our last visits can be found at 'The Decorative Fair' or 'Decoratively Battersea'.
