There are certain events in the antiques calendar that carry a reputation all of their own, and The Decorative Fair at Battersea is undoubtedly one of them.
In May 2026, Shackleton Fox exhibited there for the first time. After years of visiting fairs, sourcing pieces and selling online to clients around the world, taking a stand at Battersea felt like an important moment for us — and an opportunity to present the collection in an entirely different way.
Rather than simply filling a stand with stock, we wanted to create something that felt recognisably Shackleton Fox: a collected country-house interior where antique lighting, paintings, furniture and decorative objects could sit naturally together.
Preparing for Battersea began long before we arrived in London.
Every piece had to earn its place. Scale, colour, texture and proportion all mattered, but so did the relationship between objects. A painting might have been chosen because it worked above a particular piece of furniture; a lamp because it brought warmth to a darker corner; a sculptural object because it gave an otherwise formal arrangement a little eccentricity.
Then came the practical reality of transporting everything to Battersea and transforming an empty exhibition space into an interior.
The process was part installation, part interior design and inevitably involved a great deal of moving things around.
Objects that seemed perfectly placed one moment would be moved half an hour later. Paintings changed walls, tables changed position and lighting was adjusted until the whole stand began to feel settled rather than staged.
That slightly layered, evolved appearance was important to us. The best interiors rarely look as though everything arrived on the same day, and we wanted Stand B12 to have that same sense of history.
Once the fair opened, the atmosphere changed completely.
Battersea brings together dealers, collectors, interior designers and people who simply love beautiful and unusual things. For us, one of the pleasures was seeing which pieces made people stop.
Some visitors were immediately drawn to the lighting. Others noticed a painting tucked into a gallery wall or an object that might easily have been overlooked online.
That is one of the great advantages of exhibiting in person. Online, an object is necessarily viewed individually. At a fair, it becomes part of an interior and people can understand its scale, character and relationship with other pieces.
“The stand gave us the opportunity to show not simply what we sell, but how we believe antiques can live within an interior.”
For a business built predominantly online, those conversations were particularly valuable.
We met existing clients, new collectors, interior designers and fellow dealers, and many conversations began simply because somebody had spotted something unexpected on the stand.
One of the highlights of our opening day at Battersea was welcoming Harry Charles Tim to Stand B12.
Shackleton Fox has become an international seller of Harry's work, and we had brought a number of his pieces with us to The Decorative Fair. Seeing several of them displayed together on the stand gave visitors an opportunity to discover his distinctive work in person and made Harry's visit to the fair particularly special for us.
There is something very different about exhibiting the work of a living artist when you have come to know both the person and the story behind the pieces. Harry's visit gave us the opportunity to spend time together on the stand, surrounded by works that had travelled with us to Battersea and were now being introduced to collectors and designers from around the world.
For us, it was one of those moments that made our first Battersea particularly memorable. The fair was not simply about presenting antiques and objects for sale; it was also about the people, relationships and stories that sit behind the things we choose to represent.
One of the most interesting things about exhibiting is discovering which pieces attract attention when they are seen in person.
It is not necessarily the largest, oldest or most valuable object.
Sometimes it is the patina of a surface, the scale of a lamp, an unusual subject in a painting or simply the way an object has been placed that makes somebody stop and look again.
That instinctive reaction is something we think about constantly when sourcing.
We are rarely looking for antiques simply because they fit a particular period or category. We look for pieces with presence — objects that bring individuality, history and sometimes a little humour into a room.
Battersea reinforced that approach.
The pieces that prompted the most conversation were often those with a strong personality: unusual lighting, characterful paintings, sculptural objects and things that were difficult to neatly categorise.
Being surrounded by so many dealers was also a reminder of what makes the antiques trade endlessly interesting.
Every stand represented a different eye.
Some were beautifully restrained; others theatrical and densely layered. There were important pieces alongside wonderfully eccentric ones, and objects spanning centuries placed comfortably beside twentieth-century design.
For us, fairs such as Battersea are as much about looking and learning as they are about selling.
Seeing how other dealers present objects, discovering unfamiliar makers and periods, and talking to people who have spent decades specialising in a particular field all feed back into the way we source for Shackleton Fox.
Our first Decorative Fair was demanding, exciting and enormously valuable.
There are inevitably things we would do differently next time — exhibiting has a habit of teaching you very quickly — but seeing Shackleton Fox translated from an online business into a physical interior was particularly rewarding.
More than anything, Battersea confirmed something we have always believed: antiques are at their best when they are lived with rather than simply displayed.
A centuries-old table, an eccentric painting, an antique lamp or a beautifully worn object does not need to belong to a period-perfect room. The interest often comes from mixing those pieces and allowing their individual histories to become part of a new interior.
Stand B12 was our interpretation of that idea.
A collection assembled piece by piece, brought together for a few days in Battersea, and our first opportunity to welcome people into the world of Shackleton Fox in person.
And, after months of preparation, many miles travelled and rather a lot of furniture moved around, seeing people walk onto the stand and begin exploring made it all worthwhile.
Jackie & Jonathan
Hope to see you again soon at Battersea!
