To find a good antique, sometimes you have to search far and wide, high and low, and forage in dark depths. To reach the Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair was a very similiar story. I spent most of my morning foraging through Battersea Park, (thank goodness it was a dry day), trauling through muddy banks and even stumbling around the zoo trying to discover where such a fair would be hidden. Even when I reached a car park to a temporary tent I was still not at all sure I had reached the antiques fair. The only give away was that the café at the entrance of the tent had been given an antique make-over and there was an eery silence that only taunts museums.

www.rhonavalentine.co.uk

Thankfully, due to the lack of directions, there was a lack of people at fair and I could spend much longer admiring the collections sellers had beautifully displayed. Admittedly I believe there were more dogs than visitors. Over 140 stands contained everything from small golden mirrors and antique clock faces to large farmhouse kitchen tables and beds. There were specialist mirror sellers, specialist vintage clock sellers, and specialists in walking sticks and canes. Most stands displayed a variety of items from large furniture to smaller collectables, and there were a huge amounts of serving tables to be found, in rustic French dining rooms and workbenches also found in French kitchens. This must be the latest must have in interior kitchen décor!

There was, sadly, a huge lack of textiles. From the name ‘decorative antiques and textiles fair’ I would have liked to have seen much more textiles. One stand had a variety of rugs, faded and worn, yet they were sadly nothing special. Another stand offered a re-upholstery service offering a wide range of modern fabrics including Orla Kiely Fabrics, whilst the third stand remotely relating to textiles was an antique chair stand offering old chairs already stripped and ready for re-upholstering.

www.charlottecasadejus.com

Charlotte Casadéjus offered a variety of white house linen and cushions made from vintage lace and another stand offered vintage house linen from cotton bedding to table clothes. However this stand was displayed in such a way that there was no way of unwrapping the linen and thus no way for the visitor to even consider the size or wear and tear of the pieces on offer. On top of this most pieces were initialled with fantastic hand embroidery dating back to perhaps the 1850’s but good luck finding something with initials to match your own or vaguely related! So I must say YshLondon was highly disapointed.

www.mollyhoggdesign.com

However, there were a great many unique treasures to be found : a wooden birdcage the size of an elaborate dolls house and designed to look like a medieval castle including turrets and towers, a victorian telescopic screw driver, a Mercedes Benz car grills transformed into glittering mirrors, and gothic tresseled antlers used as chandeliers – they all went some way to improving our overview of the fair!

Images www.decorativefair.com unless stated