For one week from Monday 29 October, 70 leading UK dealers are congregating in London for the Winter Art & Antiques Fair. Taking place at the Gallery Level of the National Hall of Olympia London, the fair promises an exciting lineup of collectors, connoisseurs, interior designers and Christmas shoppers.
The fair is the last important art and antiques fair before Christmas and offers 20,000 objects of exceptional quality. Not to mention, the winter nights give the event a seasonal sparkle and luxurious atmosphere.
Included among these tens of thousands of objects is furniture dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries, as well as art deco furniture and objects, Asian antiques, textiles and carpet, glass, mirrors, silver, and fine art from old masters to the contemporary. In amongst these treasures famous names can be found, such as Lalique, Matisse, Meissen, Cartier and Asprey.
Fair Director, Mary Claire Boyd says, “For anyone looking for great craftsmanship and extraordinary one-of-a-kind pieces for a home or a collection, this is an important event in the London Winter art and antiques calendar”.
Dealers exhibiting include, but are not limited to, Wakelin & Linfield, Haynes Fine Art of Broadway, Anthea AG Antiques Ltd, Morgan Strickland Decorative Arts, Mary Cooke Antiques, Richard Price & Associates, Peter Bunting, S & S Timms, Atelier Ltd and Philip Carrol.
Before the fair opens, every piece for sale is checked over by a team of trade experts to ensure authenticity. In other words, new buyers can shop with confidence.
For those looking to shop ‘on trend’, something that’s increasingly on the rise, which the Winter Art & Antiques Fair offers in plenty, is brown furniture. Incredibly stylish and a talking point of any room, brown furniture could be a Georgian tallboy, a Regency centre table, or a 19th-century gilt mirror.
Boyd says, “Brown furniture was more synonymous with large, period properties but increasingly we’ve seen shoppers of all ages gravitate towards 17th, 18th and 19th century English furniture. Savvy, in-the-know buyers are bored with the same product being reproduced time and time again and are looking for individuality… Clever decorators mix them with contemporary pieces with sometimes just one statement piece. This combination of new and old creates a real wow factor and adds both texture and soul into a room.”
Experts agree that brown furniture is firmly back in the spotlight: interior designer, founder of eliská design associates ltd and member of the British Institute Interior Design (BIID), Eliská Sapera says, “Brown furniture is back! Beautifully made brown furniture mixed with contemporary pieces, make a room ‘pop’. The patina of wood against colour is spectacular and inviting. My advice would be to always buy the best quality you can afford.”
If, like us, you’re marking your calendars with the dates of this fair, we’ve got something to make it a little easier.
Thanks to our friends at Winter Art & Antiques Fair, we’re offering complimentary tickets to the fair. All you have to do is visit this link, download the ticket, print it off and present it to the box office when you arrive. Please note, the ticket admits two people and valid from 30 October to 4 November.
Click here to learn more about the Winter Art & Antiques Fair