PARIS— It’s small wonder that the Paris Biennale?which runs this year from September 11 through 21, is open every day from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. and includes such bonus events as the gala dinner, on September 9, and the glitzy vernissage, on September 10—is regarded by exhibitors as the world’s most exhausting fair. But is it still the most glamorous? That claim will be under scrutiny. The number of exhibitors selling top-notch fine and decorative arts is down to 95 from 2006’s 110, with dealers from outside France accounting for most of the dropouts. All eight additions, meanwhile, are from the host country, no doubt because the Biennale is run by France’s national dealer body, the Syndicat National des Antiquaires.

But the reduced numbers also reflect the Biennale’s drive to become the principal alternative to TEFAF Maastricht. To this end, it has created an airier atmosphere, with booths fronted by giant 20-foot doorways and grouped around inner courtyards. The result is an intimacy that contrasts favorably with the gigantism of the 250-booth TEFAF juggernaut. It doesn’t hurt that the Biennale takes place in the Grand Palais, the glass-roofed Art Nouveau landmark off the Champs-Élysées.

Although contemporary art is not represented, traditional furniture, Art Deco, Old Masters and jewelry have 11 booths each, while modern art is shown at 18, and the plethora of ancient artworks on display should satisfy the most exacting antiquities connoisseur.

One newcomer is the Parisian furniture specialist Kraemer & Cie. The famously discreet family outfit hasbeen in business since 1875 but stayed away from fairs until the emerging fifth generation, Mickaël, 28, and Sandra, 27, instigated a change in its policy. The gallery raised eyebrows at Maastricht by encasing Louis XV stools in Plexiglas.At the Biennale, their booth will take the form of two glass cubes facing each other—one furnished traditionally, with hangings and parquet flooring; the other with a “contemporary look” of transparent walls and a steel floor. Their prize piece is a marble-topped, ormolu-mounted Chinese-lacquered Louis XV commode stamped BVRB, for the 18th-century French cabinetmaker Bernard II van Risamburgh.

Classical French furniture has always been a Biennale strong suit, but the long-eschewed categories of Art Deco and design are now equally prominent. This year several Paris-based dealers are showcasing individual designers. Galerie du Passage is offering a round metal coffee table that Gio Ponti made in 1954 for a villa in Caracas, while Olivier Watelet has metal furniture that Jacques Quinet designed in the 1960s for his own home. Yves Gastou is selling a bookcase, tables, a desk and chairs in sycamore and walnut that Carlo Scarpa created in 1942 for the Casa Pelizzari in Venice, and Patrick Seguin is featuring Jean Royère?s metal-latticework Croisillon chairs, armchairs and sofa, also from the ’40s.

One of the event’s costliest offerings, at £6,250,000 ($12.4 million), is Monet?s 1881 La Seine à Vétheuil, which is among 30 Impressionist paintings being shown at the London heavyweight Richard Green. Also in this assemblage is Camille Pissarro?s Cricket Match at Bedford Park, 1897, painted from his son Lucien?s London balcony.

Among the works on paper at the fair is Alfred Stevens?s The Painter’s Drawing Room, in pencil and watercolor (€180,000; $286,000), at Berko Fine Paintings, of Knokke-Heist, Belgium. Visitors will also find drawings by Gauguin, plus Fernand Léger?s 1924 gouache Éléments mécaniques (€230,000; $366,000), all at Paris-based A.L.F.A., whose Biennale debut crowns the gallery’s meteoric rise under Lille-born Aude Lamorelle, 32, since its launch in 2002.

Sculpture is well-represented at the Biennale, too, with five specialist dealers. At the Paris-based Univers du Bronze, Jean-Léon Gérôme?s Bonaparte Entering Cairo, cast by the French foundry Siot-Decauville around 1900, rubs shoulders with Rodin?s Fugit Amor, inspired by Dante?s Inferno, in a posthumous circa 1930 casting by the Alexis Rudier foundry. The booth of Le Minotaure, also of Paris, exhibits the wooden Danseuses created by the Ukrainian-born French sculptor Chana Orloff in 1916, alongside the desk that the De Stijl sculptor Georges Vantongerloo made for himself in 1920.

Antiquities at the fair span the Mediterranean to the Pacific. The Biennale president, the Paris-based Christian Deydier, has cast his net in ancient China, bringing a Tang Dynasty (618–907) sancai-glazed earthenware Court Lady and a bronze Water Buffalo from the Warring States period (475–221 B.C.).

Brussels-based Gisèle Croës is offering two gilt-brass crowns from the Liao Dynasty (907–1125), founded by Khitan nomads. One is decorated with a phoenix, dragons and flame-ringed pearls, the other with disks representing apsaras, or nymphs. A Bactrian Princess at least 3,000 years old is on display at Paris’s Galerie Kevorkian next to a circa 1000 B.C. Transcaucasian bronze processional figure bearing a stag on its head.

Standouts at Phoenix Ancient Art, of New York and Geneva, are two items made in Thrace around 400 B.C.: a gilded silver bowl decorated with a bearded rider, possibly Odysseus, and a bronze and iron helmet in the shape of a peaked Phrygian bonnet. A gold aureus from the reign of the Roman emperor Carinus (283–85) is a showstopper at the Parisian coin specialist Sabine Bourgey.

The London Medieval art specialist Sam Fogg is bringing a dramatically carved circa 1340 white marble Virgin Annunciate. Also on offer at Fogg is a 15th-century brass fountain from Saxony shaped like a castle with a crenellated top that climaxes in a spout depicting a ferocious animal head. Catching eyes at Dr. Jörn Günther Rare Books, of Hamburg, are two vellum manuscripts: the 32-page circa 1330 Vita Sancti Antonii, from Bologna, illustrated with 48 miniatures by the Maestro del Leggendario Angioino Ungherese, a disciple of the Italian painter Ugolino di Nerio (1280–1349), and a 300-page Flemish book of hours, circa 1480, with 9 full-page miniatures and 69 historiated initials.

Jewelry provides the modern and contemporary glamour. Cartier is unveiling a Prism Clock in rock crystal, mother-of-pearl, platinum and diamonds that features an obelisk adorned with an ancient Egyptian statuette of the god Osiris. Harry Winston has a diamond necklace mounted with a 37.92-carat padparadscha sapphire, a rare pink-orange stone.

“The Grand Palais is the ideal venue to showcase our most beautiful collections,” says Harry Winston CEO Thomas J. O’Neill. Indeed, visitors—expected to number 100,000—should be dazzled by the 8,000-some pieces to inspect at the jeweler’s booth.

"Grand Scale" originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's September 2008 Table of Contents.