Firsts took Books in Bloom as its theme at the Saatchi Gallery in 2025, with more than 100 dealers and the Chelsea Physic Garden beside them.
Books in Bloom gave Firsts its theme in 2025, and the Saatchi Gallery held the fair from Thursday 15 to Sunday 18 May, just before the Chelsea Flower Show.
The theme came from Chelsea itself. The Chelsea Physic Garden, founded by the Society of Apothecaries in 1673, took part throughout, and its team talked visitors through the garden’s research and its library of books and manuscripts. Plants and printing have a long shared history: early herbals used woodcuts to teach medicine, and Victorian natural history plates were coloured by hand for scientists and collectors alike. Alan Titchmarsh, a gardener and bibliophile who has collected gardening books for more than fifty years, lent his support.
The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association presented the fair, and more than 100 dealers from around the world took stands. Not every book was botanical, and the shelves also carried travel, private press, poetry, children’s books and science fiction.
An invitation-only preview opened the fair on the Thursday evening. Beaux Books showed the 1938 colour chart the Royal Horticultural Society used to name plants, Daniel Crouch Rare Books a 1753 map of the Chelsea Physic Garden, Peter Harrington a herbal of 1543, and Shapero Rare Books a Chinese album of flower watercolours from around 1800 that once belonged to the Duke of Marlborough. Talks ran alongside, among them David Pearson on provenance.