LONDON—The venerable Watercolours & Drawings Fair has been going for many years, attracting a core collecting group of quiet academic collectors and nice ladies up from the country who like predominantly English drawings and watercolors.

This year, it’s different—because it has finally added a pendant fair: Modern Works on Paper. High old time, I say, because modern and contemporary artworks on paper (including photography) are, for many young people, the first affordable stage in what could ultimately become an indulgence in full-blown 20th- and 21st-century art collecting.

Showing in the former Museum of Mankind at the back of The Royal Academy of Arts, the modern fair was situated on the ground floor, with the ancient art (well, l9th-century and earlier) on the first floor.

Amongst the modern group, there were some interesting specialist dealers, several selling book illustrations, one dealing in French fabric designs on paper and, most notably, gallery owner William Ellis, who specializes in jazz photography.

And there were a few unique events at the fair as well. “Drawingswap” was an interesting idea—you do a drawing, post it on a wall and swap it for another, one of which might be by a famous artist. And appraisal day was very popular, even revealing, to the astonishment of the appraiser, a more-than-possibly genuine Modigliani drawing!

But going around the fair I was surprised—bearing in mind the massive rise in interest and value of British postwar art in the past three or four years—that there were not more works on paper by Patrick Heron, Terry Frost, Victor Pasmore, Peter Lanyon, or others.

Then, I saw Red and Black Laced, a magnificent Terry Frost etching at the booth of Piano Nobile Fine Paintings.

Piano Nobile’s canny gallerist Robert Travers also had a fine Bridget Riley, but the chef d’oeuvre here was a superb Matisse drawing from l947. And here, too, another strong collecting area—Indian contemporary art—was represented by two prints by Shariki Panchal, a very interesting artist whose work was based on Moghul miniature imagery.

Two very fine prints by Victor Pasmore were to be seen at James Kinmont Fine Art; Points of Contact and Ecology of the Mind are both exquisitely modulated prints—the perfect starting point for a modern British collection. Here, I also liked the subtle Mondrianesque geometrics of a young German artist named Jo Niemeyer.

James Kinmont is very similar to many exhibitors at this fair in that he doesn’t have a traditional gallery, but deals by appointment—an increasing trend in London amongst younger gallerists who would rather show at fairs and enthuse collectors via their Web sites than sit in expensive galleries waiting for the world to pass by. Pickings amongst this group (including Kinmont) can be very interesting indeed.

At Toffler Pruskin Fine Art & Design, I was lucky to bump into the distinguished artist Maty Grunberg. His three-dimensional works on paper are precise exercises in sculptural erosion, where the top layer is painted in a geometric pattern that is echoed by the cutouts. These works deal with the subject of disintegration and reconstruction—or endings and beginnings. Particularly fine was Elliptical Perspective, Ultramarine (2006).

Grunberg is also a very accomplished designer. Furniture retailer Zeev Aram has rightly revived his superb, l960s, origami-like, foldout coffee table and geometric rug—both based on complex mathematical equations, both looking as if they had been designed yesterday, not nearly half a century ago.

At the England & Co. booth there were more paper cutouts from Georgia Russell, a young artist who shreds layer upon layer of paper and boxes the results. Her shredded manuscript, Chopin’s Berceuse, and work titled Passing Through, incorporating a shadowy bust, were both delicate and unusual.

There was a noticeable shortage, though, of contemporary photography at the fair, but among the offerings was Blanca Brunner’s haunting digital image Hotel Vacation 5 at the William Ling Gallery. Ling shows in a project space in Notting Hill and is worth watching as a gallerist with an interesting eye.