As the American International Fine Art Fair opens its 17th installment — smaller this time, with only 49 exhibitors compared to last year’s 65 —  to the public today in West Palm Beach, Florida, visitors will be greeted with waterside Impressionist idylls by the likes of Pissarro and Renoir, going for upwards of $5 million at the Richard Green Gallery booth, as well as  brand-new one-off pieces of jewelry crafted from emerald and moonstone by Fabergé. These two booths manning the entrance may seem nothing out of the ordinary for an art fair, but delving further into the Palm Beach County Convention Center, the merchandise better reflects the fair as a hybrid of antiques and hipness. Under the cool purple neon trimming the tops of the 49 exhibitors’ booths, the objects speak of past lives from bygone eras.

The charming knick-knacks lining UK-based The Silver Fund’s shelves serve as a genteel archaeological study of the 20th century’s well-heeled. Among the silver cigarette boxes, sculpted salt cellars, and miniature Cartier clocks, an object called the Gentleman’s Companion caught our eye. The little gadget is like the Swiss Army Knife’s posh younger brother, encasing a knife, magnifying glass, pen, and key (no doubt to the Rolls Royce), in gold. At London’s John Jaffa Antiques, a lady’s larger version of the all-purpose toolkit was a Maplewood sewing box that belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte’s mistress, the Duchess of Orléans, and comes complete with her mother-of-pearl knives, silver scissors, a gold telescope, and other sundries.

Past the intertwined sculptural Murano Glass lamp posts of Pieke Bergman’s “Metamorphosis,” brought by Venice’s Berengo Studio to serve as centerpieces to the fair, Gallery Afrodit of Ankara, Turkey lined its walls with Turkish carpets dating back to the 17th century. Elsewhere, London’s Mallett showed the true potential in decorating with different eras. Within the bright orange walls of its booth’s staged living room, there was “Ammonite” (2012), a cubic patinated steel bookshelf by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance; 17th-century inlaid tables from India; a small collection of Neolithic-era arrowheads; and a Chippendale giltwood mirror circa 1760, all pulled together around a mammoth Spanish glass chandelier from 1830. In one corner the eclecticism hit its apex with a 2012 commission by Italian photographer Willy Rizzo. His lazy Susan-equipped table, done in white lacquer as a nod to the period in the ’60s when his design career was at its height, was covered in rows of standing, elaborately painted cut-outs of mushrooms from 1850s France (they were reminders of what fungi were safe to eat). When asked about the eclecticism, a Mallett representative told ARTINFO that their only collection criteria was for things that would make you smile. Together, it works.

Back on the subject of past lives, fair newcomer Long-Sharp Gallery presented an intimate side of artists from “Picasso to Pop,” as the Indianapolis-based gallery proclaims to specialize in. Jean-Michel Basquiat pen-and-ink drawings were acquired from one of the late artist’s high school classmate’s notebooks. And while the fair was covered in Warhol — the familiar red face of “Mao” (1972) at Massey Fine Art; his “Guns” (1982) framing the Jean Royère Ambassador armchairs (1956-1958) at Rudolf Budja Gallery; his 1980-1981 polarcolor snapshots of Grace Jones, O.J. Simpson, Gianni Versace, and the like at Mark Borghi — it’s the wall opposite Basquiat in the Long-Sharp booth that the pop art icon’s fans should flock to. A quartet of silver photographs by William John Kennedy show a Warhol just on the cusp of fame unfolding a screen of Marilyn Monroe. Holding the transparent print in front of his face, Warhol looks like he’s been double-exposed. And the effect is amplified by the piece hanging beside it, the posterized orange-and-turquoise 1976 “Marilyn,” what that screen eventually became. 

To see images from AIFAF, click on the slideshow.