The Decorative Fair opened its 2025 year in Battersea Park with some 130 dealers, a mezzanine of antique rugs and textiles, and architectural drawings as its backdrop.
The Decorative Fair opened its three editions of 2025 at Evolution London in Battersea Park, running from Tuesday 21 to Sunday 26 January.
The family who founded the fair in 1985 still run it, and Battersea Park has been its home since 1997. It was the first event staged on the site that became Evolution London, in two canvas marquees, and its success shaped the semi-permanent hall that followed. Their premise was that the antiques trade and the interior design trade should sell to the same buyer, and the dealers show everything from the 1700s to the 1970s at a range of prices.
January is the edition for light and glass. Modernist and period lighting, mirrors, studio glass, crystal and silver are better represented on the winter floor than at other times of year, alongside jewellery and vintage watches for the buyer who comes for something smaller than a chest of drawers.
Some 130 specialist dealers took stands in 2025, many of them dressing their pitches as room sets. On the mezzanine the London Antique Rug and Textile Art Fair gathered 15 dealers in rugs, carpets, tribal weaving and antique textiles. The campaign for the year borrowed from the architect George Saumarez Smith, a director of ADAM Architecture since 2004, who allowed drawings from his Sketchbooks, published by Triglyph Books in 2021, to serve as backdrops to its imagery.