Decorative Arts & Fine Antiques

Decorative Arts & Fine Antiques, known locally by its initials DAFA, occupies a large showroom on North Dixie Highway in the stretch of Oakland Park that longtime Broward County shoppers still call Antique Row. The gallery deals in a mix of fine furniture, decorative objects, sculpture, and paintings, with a rotating inventory that has included Harvey Probber dining chairs, mahogany writing desks, English Delft plates, Art Deco bronzes, and oil paintings by French Post-Impressionist painters. The range of material on the floor at any given time reflects how the business is run, less like a single themed shop and more like a curated gallery where pieces are sourced individually rather than bought in bulk lots.

DAFA is registered as an active Florida corporation, Decorative Arts & Fine Antiques Inc, and the business has built a client base that includes both local buyers furnishing South Florida homes and collectors from farther afield who track down specific categories of decorative art. Because the inventory turns over as pieces sell and new acquisitions come in, regular visitors often find the showroom looks noticeably different from one season to the next. That churn is part of the appeal for people who treat Antique Row as a place to browse repeatedly rather than visit once.

The North Dixie Highway corridor where DAFA sits has been a magnet for antique dealers in Oakland Park for decades, with a dense cluster of shops within a few blocks of each other between roughly 32nd and 45th Streets. DAFA’s building sits among several other antique and auction businesses, which makes it a natural stop for anyone doing a walking or driving tour of the district rather than a single destination on its own. Shoppers looking for a specific style, whether that is mid-century Danish design, Art Deco pieces, or European decorative art, tend to find DAFA’s mix broad enough to be worth a stop even if a particular item is not their focus.

Because much of the inventory consists of one-of-a-kind pieces, pricing tends to reflect condition, provenance, and rarity rather than a fixed markup, which is typical of the fine antiques trade generally. Interested buyers who want to check on a specific type of item before making the drive are generally better served calling ahead, since a gallery like this cannot guarantee that a particular style or piece will be on the floor on a given day. For interior designers and collectors working on a specific project, that kind of advance call is standard practice at DAFA and at most of its Antique Row neighbors.

DAFA fits into the broader identity of Oakland Park as a city with an unusually concentrated small-business antiques trade for its size, a reputation built over years by independent dealers choosing to locate along this stretch of Dixie Highway rather than in a mall or shopping center. For anyone building a directory of independently owned Oakland Park retail, DAFA represents one of the more established and visible names in that antique gallery cluster.