The Decorative Fair's spring edition filled its Battersea Park marquee in May 2026, and a foyer potting shed marked the 160th anniversary of Beatrix Potter's birth.
Beatrix Potter’s 160th anniversary gave the Decorative Fair’s spring edition its foyer story, told at Evolution London in Battersea Park from Tuesday 12 to Sunday 17 May 2026.
Four decades old, the fair is known among decorators for refusing to rank one period over another: an eighteenth-century commode and a 1970s lamp are judged by the same eye. It holds three editions a year in Battersea Park, in January, May and September, and the May edition is the garden one, weighted toward statuary, urns and outdoor furniture.
Around 130 dealers showed in 2026, and the organisers named the newcomers in April, ahead of the opening. The buyers are interior designers and decorators sourcing for clients, alongside collectors who come for a single object with a history, dating from the 1700s to the 1970s, at a wide range of price points.
The foyer display, A Perfect Potting Shed for Mr. McGregor, was made with Gilbert Bannerman, a young dealer at the fair and scion of the garden designers Isabel and Julian Bannerman. It set garden pieces beside vernacular country furniture and treen, the small handmade wooden household objects, with a touch of nostalgia, and every item came from the exhibitors’ own stock. Potter was born on 28 July 1866, and the title borrowed the name of the gardener whose vegetable patch Peter Rabbit raids.