A Look Back at the Winter Fair 2019
For The Country Brocante Team, November means only one thing for us, and that is the Winter Fair! This year our Winter Fair took place at Parham House and Gardens in West Sussex. By September, we have booked our exhibitors and made most of our plans but these really ramp up after the Harvest Fair in September.
We love the Winter Fair as it is always so magical, however, it is not without its difficulties! The main one being the great British weather! The fair is held in a field, in a marquee, in November so whilst we envisage a cold frosty winters day the reality this year was torrential rain and a lot of mud!
Two weeks before the fair our marquees start to go up and we spend many long, cold days in a field as things start to take shape. It’s an exciting time, but very tiring too and a lot of hard work for our small team behind the scenes.
The Thursday before the fair starts is Set-Up Day, the day that all our brilliant exhibitors arrive. It never fails to amaze us how they transform an empty marquee into a complete treasure trove! Whilst the exhibitors were setting up, we get busy foraging and decorating the entrance to the marquee. Hannah Watchorn, a long time friend of the Brocante, produced some beautiful hand-drawn hanging banners for us that we hung in the entrance. Hannah used quotes from the book ‘The Wood’ by John Lewis-Stempel to accompany her beautiful illustrations and this gave us a theme of sorts - we wanted to create a woodland feel. The Sussex countryside offered an abundance of holly and ivy for us to use and this year a lovely Silver Birch that had fallen in a storm provided us with some beautiful big leafy branches too. Adorned with twinkly fairy lights we achieved a cosy and welcoming entrance!
We were joined by over one hundred exhibitors this year, and I found it hard to narrow down the photos to share here from the hundreds that we took so here are just a few, a glimpse into the marquees!
Above: Nook
Above: Wild Willow Flowers
Above: Hoof Antiques
Above: Belle Pottery
Above: Love Life Love Vintage
Above: The Painted Anthology
Above: The Little Red Robin
Alongside our exhibitors, Caroline Zoob hosted a wonderfully festive embroidery workshop, with guest teachers Liz Jones, Karen Thomas (The Ostrich and The Silkworm) and Penny Edwards (The Embroidery Bird). We were also joined once more by Elizabeth Harbour who creates the most beautiful block printed papers and wooden decorations and ran workshops throughout the fair!
Despite the mud, the rain and the cold we had a wonderful fair once again, there is nothing better than seeing happy buyers leaving the fair laden down with bags and treasures off to their new homes!
