Boldface shoppers (Venus Williams, Aerin Lauder, Remy Renzullo, Raf Simons): check. Extravagant floral installations (a Matterhorn of baby’s breath, roses, and chrysanthemums by Ten Kate Flowers & Decorations): check. Roving servers shucking and proffering oysters and proffering champagne: check. Representatives of the world’s top museums shopping mode (Virginia Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Hispanic Society Museum & Library): check. Seven thousand years of covetables (from jewels to antiques to contemporary sculpture): check. As I overheard one guest saying in delight, “This is candyland!”
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The latest edition of the European Fine Arts Fair (TEFAF), hailed for decades as the most important of its kind in the world, has just opened in the charming Dutch city of Maastricht, welcoming blue-chip collectors, eagle-eyed curators, and an avalanche of global journalists. That includes yours truly, a contributing editor of AD, who was cohosting, with Melissa Biggs Bradley of Indagare, an AD-branded Insider Journey for 14 design-minded guests: decorators, connoisseurs, and people who love deep-dive travel and fine design and architecture.
TEFAF Maastricht 2023 opened to the public on Saturday, March 11, and runs through Sunday, March 19; among its offerings are the following items—my sampling of the thousands being proffered by nearly 300 international dealers. They are what I would buy if I had the money.
Mitchell Owens
S. J. Phillips
There’s still time to calibrate your ensemble for the coronation of King Charles III, so if you’re thinking tiaras, there’s no better place to get the glitter than the booth of S. J. Phillips. There, among other bejeweled headgear, is a 1950s necklace cunningly made so that it can be converted into a tiara at a moment’s notice.
