It’s one of our favorite things: a long day searching the stalls of a big antiques show, looking for that thing we didn’t know we needed, and learning about the past while doing it. What better place for the search than London? The Mayfair Antiques & Fine Art Fair features some 40 distinguished specialist exhibitors. Think Victorian and Edwardian furniture, 19th– and 20th–century British and European paintings, English silver, decorative objects, and quirky jewels from the past. I mean, who wouldn’t want a silver-gilt octopus bangle? —Laura Jacobs