PHILADELPHIA, PA. – The 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show has moved three times since debuting in 1995. This year, the 16-year-old fair founded by Barn Star Productions looked more settled than ever when it opened with mimosas and chocolates on Friday, April 8, continuing through the weekend.
 
The fair’s renewed glow comes from its winning combination of tenured exhibitors and its comfortable setting in what is affectionately known as the “Little Armory,” the small regimental drill hall between Market and Chestnut Streets. By contrast, the Philadelphia Antiques Show, the anchor fair that this one orbits, has been thrown into temporary disarray by two forced moves in the last five years.
 
But, in show business, what is good for one is good for all. Destination events like Philadelphia’s April fairs require quality, depth and variety to lure collectors from around the country. Thus Barn Star chief Frank Gaglio fervently wishes for the Philadelphia Antiques Show to be comfortably settled in a new home and is delighted to learn that Pennsylvania Convention Center, only a few minutes away from the 23rd Street Armory by taxi, is the Philadelphia Antiques Show’s likely new venue.
 
“Our goal is to stay at the 23rd Street Armory but it is imperative that our 2012 dates be consistent with those of the Philadelphia Antiques Show,” Gaglio told Antiques and Fine Art shortly after both fairs closed. “Together with Freeman’s April Americana auction, our two shows constitute, in a very loose sense, an Antiques Week in Philadelphia.”
 
Though dealers discourage frank discussion of it, vigorous trading among exhibitors is an industry mainstay. Thus it was promising that the 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show enjoyed robust early sales, with many Philadelphia Antiques Show exhibitors buying from their 23rd Street colleagues on Friday before their own fair opened.
 
“The hard-core collectors came through on Friday but business continued through the weekend. We see new collectors on Sunday, which is so important to us,” explained Bev Norwood of Norwoods’ Spirit of America Antiques.  The Maryland dealers made an early sale of a boldly graphic tailor’s trade sign of about 1850.
 
“This isn’t like New England. We sell on all three days here,” said Stephen Corrigan of Stephen-Douglas Antiques, whose stack of receipts offered a hopeful sign that the sluggish Americana market is recovering from its slump of several years. Catering to the middle and high ends of the market, Stephen-Douglas featured a petite green and red painted Pennsylvania corner cupboard, $12,500.
 
While the 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show benefits from the perception that it is an affordable place to shop, not everything is inexpensive. A bona fide masterpiece with a price tag to match, an 18th century tall-case clock from Germantown, Pa., was a much ballyhooed sale at Baldwin House Antiques of Lancaster, Pa.  Marked $330,000, the clock, illustrated in Timeless:  Masterpieces of American Brass Dial Clocks by Frank Homan, is signed by its maker, John Heilig, and dated 1789. Distinguishing characteristics include a brass dial that is engraved with a portrait of George Washington flanked by drums, cannons and flags.
 
“The date is a very important feature. Washington was going through Philadelphia for the first inauguration in New York. This clock is certainly commemorative,” said Bruce G. Shoemaker of Baldwin House Antiques. A dove on the clock’s second hand corresponds with the dove weathervane that George Washington ordered from Philadelphia for Mount Vernon in 1787. The clock’s rare mulberry wood case has tulip side windows.
 
Arts of Pennsylvania made a prominent appearance at Thurston Nichols American Antiques, where a signed John Bellamy presentation box carved with an eagle was $150,000 and a Berks County unicorn chest was $69,000. They joined “Portrait of Charles Seward’s Farm,” an oil on linen farmscape of circa 1875 that the Breinigsville, Pa., dealer recently attributed to Indiana painter Granville Bishop (1831-1902).
 
Hooked mats and assorted items made in the 1930s at the Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland and Labrador were strong sellers at A Bird in Hand Antiques of Florham Park, N.J. By Saturday, proprietors Ron and Joyce Bassin had marked up four choice mats from a collection of seven. All went to one collector.  Floral-embroidered, fur-trimmed suede glove and a carved stone walrus, all bearing Grenfell labels and marks, were other rarities on offer.
 
“We sold a big hutch table, a lot of early American glass and windmill weights. Good, expensive, small things,” said Ed Holden of Holden Antiques.
 
New Jersey dealer James Grievo parted with a tall-case clock and a slant-front desk. Cape Cod dealer Hilary Nolan wrote up an early walnut hanging cupboard and a red-leather covered Chinese camphorwood chest with unusual paw feet. A woodworker’s cabinet with trompe l’oeil decorations was one of Mario Pollo’s early transactions.
 
Other reported sales included a pair of Asian apothecary cabinets and a screen at John H. Rogers and a  ship’s eagle figurehead and an oval carving of a stag at Charles Wilson Antiques and Folk Art. Connecticut dealer Martin Chasen sold more than $16,000 in silver to one client while Massachusetts dealer Bill Union placed seven paintings with a single customer.
 
“’I’ve expanded the show’s parameters by adding Asian and French art and antiques. Next year, I’d like to have a glass dealer and a specialist in paper and manuscripts,” said Gaglio. The 45 exhibitors in this year’s fair included 12 new or returning dealers.
 
From Philadelphia, Barn Star Productions moves to New Hampshire for the Manchester Pickers’ Market Antiques Show on August 8 and Midweek in Manchester Antiques Show on August 10-11. For details, see barnstar.com.
 
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PHILADELPHIA, PA.  - Philadelphia Antiques Show organizers are positioning their long-running fair for the future.
 
Following the close of 50th anniversary festivities at the city’s Navy Pier from April 8-12, the 200-member committee charged with planning the annual benefit for Penn Medicine is getting to work on the 2012 show, which will have new dates, April 27-May 1, and a new location, the Pennsylvania Convention Center in downtown Philadelphia.
 
The fair was forced from its home of 46 years, the 32th Street Armory, in 2008. It briefly settled on the outskirts of the city at Navy Pier but recently learned that another tenant in the sprawling complex, Urban Outfitters, is taking over the space. Gretchen Riley, the 2012 show chairman, briefed the fair’s 51 exhibitors on the changes at an annual wrap-up meeting on April 12.
 
“We are reinventing ourselves for the next fifty years. Times are changing and we have to appeal to a younger demographic,” Riley later told Antiques and Fine Art by phone, cautioning that attorneys for Penn Medicine are still reviewing the Convention Center contract, which she expects will be signed.
 
Riley and others anticipate that attendance will increase with a move back to Center City, where visitors enjoy a greater range of amenities and transportation options.  Riley quelled exhibitors’ concerns when she said that neither booth rates nor the size of the show is likely to change much. Penn will provide dealer parking, which was also a concern to some exhibitors.
 
“I personally think that the new show dates are better, from the perception of both buyers and sellers, who will have more time to stock fresh material,” said Fred Giampietro, an exhibitor from New Haven, Ct. Giampietro and others have suggested that the Philadelphia Antiques Show be shortened, that the dateline be extended, and that the number of exhibitors be increased to around 70.
 
“Philadelphia should remain an American show but, by expanding the dateline into the 20th century, it could include Wharton Esherick, George Nakashima, the New Hope school and other important regional specialties,” said Giampietro. A major sale for the Connecticut folk art specialist was a life-sized carved and painted Punch tobacconist figure of 1880. The sculpture had been off the market for fifty years.
 
Among the show’s handful of 20th century design specialists are Dalton’s Decorative Arts of Syracuse, N.Y., which featured a Gustav Stickley books cabinet of circa 1901; JAGR Projects of Philadelphia, emphasizing international expressions of the Arts & Crafts movement ; and Lillian Nassau LLC of Manhattan.
 
“Tiffany is what our clients are looking for and Philadelphia continues to be a great show for us,” said Nassau’s Arlie Sulka, who rounded out her display of Tiffany lighting with “Playing Dogs,” a bronze of 1916 by William Hunt Dietrich.
 
“I had one of my best shows in ten years,” said exhibitor Diana Bittel.  A favorite of Philadelphia collectors, Bittel sold chests, weathervanes, shell-work pieces and a clock.
 
“We sold quite a bit on opening night,” said Chinese export porcelain specialist John Suval, whose centerpiece was a decorated punchbowl of circa 1790, $35,000.
 
Joan Brownstein, a Newbury, Ma., specialist in American folk painting, sold “Girl in A Paint Decorated Chair,” an oil on poplar panel of around 1825. Brownstein’s research on the painting, from a group of not yet identified portraits, appears in the Spring 2011 issue of Antiques and Fine Art.
 
“Most of our sales this year were over the weekend, said Ed Hild of Olde Hope Antiques, whose impeccably appointed stand featured an iconic South Shaftsbury, Vt., painted chest of circa 1825, priced $285,000. “We wrote up folk art, paintings and accessories but furniture was soft for us.”
 
Tillou Gallery sold a signed Fiske & Co., cast-iron recumbent stag dating to the late 19th century. Jonathan Trace of Portsmouth, N.H., parted with a writing table that was probably made in North Carolina or Virginia. It went to a delighted Virginia collector, Peter Barretta.
 
Needlework specialist Amy Finkel’s opening night sales included an exceptional Chester County, Pa., sampler dated 1798. A closely related sampler, formerly in the collection of Theodore H. Kapnek, is illustrated in The Flowering of American Folk Art. Finkel also sold an important Ohio sampler and two Philadelphia samplers.
 
“We came back for the 50th anniversary,” said returning exhibitor Suzanne Courcier of Courcier & Wilkins. The Yarmouth Port, Ma., dealers covered their side wall with a Baltimore album quilt, $32,000, that was featured in Robert Bishop’s New Discoveries in American Quilts in 1975.

Notable among Christopher Rebollo’s many sales was a pair of oil on canvas portraits of about 1808-1810 that are attributed to Jacob Eichholtz. The subjects are Benjamin Schaum and Maria Schaum of Lancaster, Pa.  The Mechanicsville, Pa., dealer also wrote up a portrait of Hannah Claypoole, attributed to James Claypoole.
 
From two mid-19th century oil on canvas portraits of George Washington at Schwarz Gallery of Philadelphia to Allan Katz’s 1874 oil on canvas portrait of the steamship Daniel Drew with Prospect Park Hotel by James Bard, the Philadelphia Show excels in the field of Americana. A 34-inch tall Father Time figure from a fraternal lodge was $135,000 at Hill Gallery of Birmingham, Mi.
 
Early New England furniture included a Rhode Island William & Mary dressing table with crossed stretchers and ball feet, $95,000, and a musical tall-case clock by Asa Munger of Herkimer, N.Y., $225,000, at Nathan Liverant & Son. A circa 1690 carver chair, $38,500; a ball-turned gate-leg table, probably from Massachusetts, $19,500; and an inscribed William & Mary chest, $12,000, were highlights at Peter Eaton Antiques, Newbury, Ma.
 
West Chester, Pa., dealer Skip Chalfant of H.L. Chalfant Antiques featured an unusual splay-legged walnut table, $46,000, that may be from Virginia or Pennsylvania. A similar table, formerly owned by Joe Kindig, is pictured in Paul Burrough’s classic text, Southern Furniture.
 
In a nod to the city, several exhibitors brought prominent works by Philadelphia cabinetmaker Joseph Barry. One example, at Carswell Rush Berlin, was a mahogany sideboard carved with female herms wearing turbans. It dated to 1820.
 
From the preview party, which drew 1,000 guests on April 8, to the Antique Dealers Association’s sold-out dinner for Morrison Heckscher on April 9, to lectures by designer Alexa Hampton, art-crime expert Robert K. Wittman and floral artist Jane Godshalk, accompanying events were heavily subscribed.
 
“In some ways, this was the end of an era,” reflected outgoing show chairman Patricia W. Cheek.
 
“Next year we will pull out all the stops,” added Riley, who is saving the announcement of the 2012 loan show for the moment that the Convention Center contract is signed.
 
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BATH, UK – America, as it looks from the other side of the pond, is examined in contrasting exhibitions celebrating the 50th anniversary of the American Museum in Britain in Bath this year. The results may surprise you.
 
Monroe Mania
With the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death approaching in 2012, tributes are rolling in. “Marilyn – Hollywood Icon,” on view through October 30, satisfies public curiosity about the doomed diva while making a compelling argument for cinema as America’s greatest 20th century art form. The show has been a massive hit with visitors.
 
“Devotees are coming in great droves,” acknowledges the museum’s curator, Laura Beresford, who organized the display that showcases film costumes and personal gowns assembled by the Channel Islands collector David Gainsborough Roberts. The show includes two of Monroe’s hottest numbers, the “wiggle” dress that established her blonde-bombshell reputation in Niagara in 1952 and the red-sequined gown from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes of 1953.  A brass figure of a dancer, a rare keepsake from M.M.’s orphanage days, joins original photographs and posters in the display.
 
“The girl who extolled the virtues of diamonds died $400,000 in debt.  She owned very little. Most of her money was spent on a great circle of hangers on,” laments the curator.
 
Fabulous Folk Art
Monroe memorabilia contrasts with the folk art that is at the heart of the American Museum in Britain’s 15,000 object collection, the finest of its kind outside the United States. Most of it was acquired in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the museum’s founders, Dallas Pratt (1914-1994), an American psychiatrist and heir to a Standard Oil fortune, and John Judkyn (1913-1963), an English antiques dealer who became an American citizen.  The partners established the museum with the goal of improving Anglo-American relations and heightening awareness of American folk art, not well understood outside of the United States.
 
“Here in Britain, the emphasis has been on the folk, not on the art. We have contextualized these pieces in a gallery setting,” Beresford says of the museum’s new Folk Art Gallery, installed in a recently renovated neoclassical picture gallery. In “Fab@50,” on view through October 30, fifty folk-art treasures, some rarely shown, are scattered throughout the period rooms at Claverton Manor, the Grade II stately house that is home to the American Museum in Britain.
 
Known for brokering the Gunn Collection to the New York State Historical Association, Southport, Ct., dealer Mary Allis advised Judkyn and Pratt on the their purchases for Claverton Manor. When Judkyn died in a road accident in France in 1963, Allis presented the museum with a penetrating portrait by the deaf-mute itinerant, John Brewster, Jr.  Folk sculpture, including cigar store Indians and a ship’s figurehead, came from Helena Penrose, a Tarrytown, N.Y., dealer who supplied Henry F. DuPont, among others.
 
Museum highlights include a gilded copper Indian weathervane much like the one that New York collector Jerry Lauren bought for $5.8 million in 2006 and a Susan’s Tooth. Among the first pieces of American scrimshaw to be studied, Susan’s teeth, engraved by Frederick Myrick aboard the Susan of Nantucket in 1828 and 1829, enjoy iconic status among collectors. In August 2010, Cape Cod dealers Alan Granby and Janice Hyland paid $200,600, a record at auction, for one at Northeast Auctions in Portsmouth, N.H.

The itinerant painter Sturtevant J. Hamblen (1817-1844) is represented by the oil on canvas portrait of Emma Thompson. “He tried so hard but ended up selling gentlemen’s trousers,” the curator says of her favorite artist.
 
Written by Laura Beresford, Folk Art from the American Museum in Britain is an informative and lushly illustrated guide to the museum’s enviable holdings. It joins Classic Quilts: The American Museum in Britain, also by Beresford.
 
Judkyn, Pratt and their milieu will come into sharper focus later this year with the publication of A Kind of Archaeology:  Collecting American Folk Art, 1876-1976 by Elizabeth Stillinger.  A companion to her well-thumbed reference, The Antiquers, this exhaustive new volume from University of Massachusetts Press studies folk art’s most ardent enthusiasts, from the pioneers Henry C. Mercer and Edwin AtLee Barber to Jean Lipman and Mary Allis.

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PINEHURST, N.C. – A little over a week from now, college basketball will have crowned its champions, baseball will be in full swing and the first of golf’s four major men’s tournaments will be played at the Augusta National Golf Club, that bastion of well-pruned privilege.
 
You may wonder what this has to do with collecting. I wondered the same until I found myself in Pinehurst, N.C., a town so unchanged from a century ago that it resembles a hand-tinted postcard.
 
Developed as a winter retreat for sporty northerners by James Walker Tufts (1835-1902), the Boston soda-fountain magnate and maker of Tufts silver-plated tableware, Pinehurst is a living monument to golf, a British import with a storied past, as well as a beautifully preserved manifestation of the American country-house movement.
 
Tufts’ genius was thinking big. After finding a sunny spot with enviable rail connections to the Northeast and Midwest, he bought up more than 5,000 acres of partially timbered pine forest and hired the firm founded by Frederick Law Olmsted to create a New England-style village on one hundred lushly landscaped acres. He completed the hat trick by recruiting Donald Ross, the Scottish-born designer of more than 400 classic courses, to be Pinehurst’s first resident pro in 1901.
 
The Ross association runs long and deep in Pinehurst and neighboring Southern Pines. Visitors can play several Ross courses, including the famed Pinehurst #2, completed in 1907. They can tuck in for the night at the homey Pinecrest Inn, operated by Ross from 1921 to 1938, and pore over more than 300 original field sketches and course layouts by Ross at the Tufts Archives in the village of Pinehurst, named a National Historic Landmark in 1996.
 
Collectors can even take a bit of vintage golf home with them. Pinehurst has two galleries devoted to golf art, antiques and memorabilia. Robert Hansen, a collector and course developer who lives nearby in the old Ross residence, Dornach Cottage, presides over Old Village Golf Shop at the corner of Dogwood and Market Streets, where he sells antique clubs, paintings, prints, photographs and sculpture.
 
Several doors down in the 1898 Harvard Building, the Old Sport & Gallery stocks a large selection of historical prints, autographed books and photographs, and golf artifacts, including selections from the collection of the late Mort Olman, author of Olman’s Guide to Golf Antiques & Other Treasures of the Game. The shop’s founder, Tom Stewart, traveled the world as a professional golfer before settling in Pinehurst.
 
“I collected for 40 years before opening a shop here in 1997,” says Stewart, who caddied as a kid growing up in northern Michigan and was 16 when he met Walter Hagen, a key figure in the development of professional golf. “Antique and collectible golf books are my passion. They say that the smaller the ball, the better the literature.”
 
Although the market in sporting antiques has slowed down a bit, outstanding collections still bring exceptional prices. In September 2010, Sotheby’s auctioned antique golf clubs from the collection Jeffrey B. Ellis, a golf historian and collector, for $2,166,209. At $181,000, the top lot was an 18th century Andrew Dickson long-nosed putter.
 
Europe’s premier sporting auction house, Mullock’s, is offering golfing memorabilia on April 28 in Hoylake, U.K.  Bonhams’ dedicated sale of golfing memorabilia is planned for June 1 in Chester, U.K.  The Golf Auction, an online seller of golf memorabilia, closes bidding on its current sale on April 10. Old Sport & Gallery is contemplating organizing an auction to coincide with the 2014 U.S. Men’s and Women’s Opens, to be played in Pinehurst.
 
“Wholesome in every respect,” as Tufts liked to say of Pinehurst.
 
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COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – Dr. Paul D’Ambrosio has been named president and chief executive officer of the Farmers’ Museum and the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown. The announcement was made Monday by Jane Forbes Clark, chairman of the Farmers’ Museum, Inc., and Dr. Douglas E. Evelyn, chairman of the New York State Historical Association.
 
D’Ambrosio, who assumes his new post on April 1, succeeds D. Stephen Elliott, who is leaving his post after six years to head the Minnesota Historical Society.
 
D’Ambrosio has been associated with the Farmers’ Museum, the New York State Historical Association and its Fenimore Art Museum for 26 years, serving as the institution’s chief curator since 1998. An expert in American folk art, D’Ambrosio is the author of Ralph Fasanella’s America and co-author of Folk Art’s Many Faces. He serves as adjunct professor of museum studies at the Cooperstown Graduate Program.
 
Two major folk art shows are opening at the Fenimore Art Museum this fall. Debuting October 1, “Inspired Traditions: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana” includes mid-18th through mid-19th century portraits, sculpture, quilts, weathervanes, trade signs, furniture, baskets and Shaker objects from one of America’s most distinguished private collections. The exhibition accompanies the publication of Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence, Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana, Volume II.
 
Organized by quilt scholar Jacqueline M. Atkins, “Unfolding Stories: Culture and Tradition in American Quilts” includes quilts from the museum’s collection, displayed for the first time in more than a decade. The show opens on September 24.
 
Founded in 1943, the Farmers’ Museum interprets the lives of ordinary people and the agricultural and trade processes of rural 19th century New York State. It is one of the oldest continuously operating outdoor museums in the United States.
 
The New York State Historical Association, which dates to 1899, preserves and exhibits objects and documents significant to New York history and American culture.  The Association is home to the Fenimore Art Museum, featuring collections of American folk art, 19th century American fine art, and the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art.
 
Cooperstown’s new president is married to Anna D’Ambrosio, assistant director and curator of decorative arts at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, N.Y
 
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NEW HAVEN, CT – For much of the past century, antiquarians have associated the former colony of Rhode Island with a group of supremely elegant block and shell-carved mahogany furniture made in the 18th century by members of two Newport Quaker clans, the Townsends and Goddards.
 
But as the new Rhode Island Furniture Archive (http://rifa.art.yale.edu) reveals, the state’s contribution is larger and more complex than previously supposed. To date, the Yale University Art Gallery team that created the site has identified more than 1,500 craftsmen working in the furniture and allied trades between 1636 and 1840.
 
The researchers have compiled more than 3,000 examples of case furniture, looking glasses and seating furniture. Clocks and tables will be added in the coming year.
 
Over a recent breakfast with Patricia E. Kane, the project’s director, and her husband, independent scholar W. Scott Braznell, I learned more about the origins of the project, which got underway in 2002, not long after Kane finished Colonial Massachusetts Silversmiths and Jewelry, the a comprehensive biographical dictionary published in 1998.
 
I also learned where the bodies are buried, so to speak, but more about that later.
 
“What we did for silver was a mammoth accomplishment, but the manuscript was out of date almost as soon as it went to the typesetters,” said Kane, who for Rhode Island furniture envisioned a versatile resource that could be updated continually.
 
Kane also wanted the archive to be of the broadest use to scholars, collectors and dealers, who can search the new site by a host of variables, including object name, maker, place of manufacture, date, owner and present location.  The last variable alone should have the trade jumping to its feet.
 
As the Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts at Yale University Art Gallery, Kane was fortunate to have the help of students, some of whom spent hours thumbing through vintage periodicals indentifying objects and noting their provenance. She benefitted from the support of individuals and organizations such as the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc., which funded a sabbatical that allowed her to spend a year researching public documents in Rhode Island record repositories. 
 
The research, which has quintupled the number of known makers of Rhode Island furniture, is already bearing fruit. In January, Keno Auctions sold a mahogany desk and bookcase with a flat top and a fitted, shell-carved interior for $15,860 including premium. John Walton, the late Connecticut dealer, purchased the piece in 1984 at Sotheby’s, whose cataloguers discovered the signature of Daniel Spencer (1741-1801) inscribed on an interior drawer.
 
Thanks to Kane and her associates, we now know that Spencer and his brother, Thomas, were born in East Greenwich, R.I., to the older sister of cabinetmaker John Goddard (1724-1785) and that the family moved to Newport, where the brothers almost certainly apprenticed as cabinetmakers. The top board of the desk section is made of mahogany, a feature that is unusual enough to raise eyebrows had the archivists not also linked three secretary bookcases made around 1790 with similar mahogany tops to Ichabod Cole of Warren, R.I. Remarkably, two other Goddard nephews working as cabinetmakers, the brothers Ebenezer Allen, Jr. (1755-1793) and Cornelius Allen (1767-1835), have also come to light.
 
Building a digitized archive from scratch presents many challenges, from singling out craftsmen not clearly identified in historical records as cabinetmakers to weighting values properly so that the search produces optimal results.  Databases need ongoing maintenance and a protocol for keeping them current.
 
That is where you, dear reader, come in. A link provided on the Rhode Island Furniture Archive’s home page allows users to submit discoveries of their own. No doubt Yale University Art Gallery would welcome monetary contributions, as well.
 
So, where are the “ bodies” buried? In the ground, as it turns out.
 
“Some indigents were buried in coffins made by John Townsend (1732-1809), who was paid by the town of Newport. I doubt if those coffins had blocks and shells or were made of mahogany,” W. Scott Braznell says with a smile.

It is show season again, after what seemed like the briefest of lulls. With the Palm Beach fairs a wrap, dealers are headed for Maastricht, New York and Philadelphia. Then it is on to London in June before the business takes a summer break. 

M is for Maastricht and Miniatures
An international cast of exhibitors began arriving in the Netherlands this week for the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), on view at the Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Centre from March 18 to 27.
 
Though it is regarded as the Continent’s best venue for traditional art and antiques, the 260-dealer mega-fair, now in its 24th year, is responding to changing tastes by increasing its emphasis on modern and contemporary art and 20th century design. Last year, TEFAF added a section devoted to works on paper, from drawings and prints to books and photography.
 
Another innovation, now three years old, is the TEFAF Showcase, which introduces more than 70,000 visitors annually to the field’s freshest faces. For 2011, six Showcase exhibitors from France, the United Kingdom and the United States were selected for the one-time honor from a field of 80 applicants.
 
The only American in this year’s Showcase is Elle Shushan. The Philadelphia-based specialist in portrait miniatures fills a gap left when London dealer David Lavender retired from TEFAF several years ago.
 
Shushan calls herself “a scholarship kid” but she need not be so modest.  For her TEFAF debut, the dealer is bringing close to 50 likenesses, many of European notables. One highlight is a signed and dated portrait, priced around $35,000, of the Empress Josephine, newly divorced from Napoleon and painted from life by Bouvier in 1812. Of three known versions, one is in the Louvre in Paris.
 
The American delegation to TEFAF includes A La Vieille Russie, Michele Beiny, Blumka Gallery, Richard L. Feigen, French & Company, Hammer Galleries, Jack Kilgore, Hans P. Kraus, Jr., Barbara Mathes, Anthony Meier, Montgomery Gallery, Otto Naumann, Royal-Athena, Sebastian + Barquet, S.J. Shrubsole, Sperone Westwater, Lawrence Steigrad, Carole Thibaut-Pomerantz, David Tunick, Ursus Books, Van de Weghe, Adam Williams and David & Constance Yates.
 
A little more than a week after she returns home, Shushan will welcome collectors in town for Philadelphia’s top antiques shows to her annual by-appointment selling event, scheduled for April 7 to 11.
 
Who says good things do not come in small packages?
 
Moments and Moves in Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Antiques Show, which gets underway at the Cruise Terminal at Pier One in the city’s Navy Yard from April 8 to 12, is known for mounting ambitious loan exhibitions rivaling those found in museums.  This year’s exhibit, “Celebrations: Antiques that Mark the Moment,” is more intimate than most. The gathering of rarely seen objects, many from private collections and small historical societies, commemorates private milestones such as birthdays and weddings, as well as parades, holidays and other public occasions. Organizers chose the theme with their own special occasion in mind. The Philadelphia Antiques Show, long a leading showcase for the American arts, turns fifty this year.
 
Coincidentally, the presentation also marks the event’s last time at the Navy Yard, its home since 2008. Urban Outfitters has purchased the Navy Yard building, forcing the show to find new venue space. Four years ago, the Philadelphia Antiques Show had to leave the 33rd Street Armory after Drexel University reclaimed the building.
 
Show manager Joshua Wainwright of Keeling Wainwright Associates flatly denies the widespread speculation that the Philadelphia Antiques Show will move to the Pennsylvania Convention Center on Arch Street in Center City in 2012.
 
“Nothing has been decided. No contract has been signed. The Convention Center is one of many options being considered,” Wainwright said from office in Maryland this week.
 
Ease of set up and proximity to transportation and other services make the Convention Center, which hosts both the Philadelphia Museum of Art Crafts Show and the Philadelphia International Flower Show, an attractive location. The challenge is keeping costs down at a facility that is known to be expensive.
 
“I wish them every success,” says Frank Gaglio, who has managed fairs at the Convention Center in the past. Organizer of the 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show, the Barn Star Productions chief says a move to the Convention Center would likely benefit all concerned by increasing traffic among events during Philadelphia’s Antiques Week. Planned for April 8 to 10, the 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show features 45 exhibitors across a range of specialties.
 
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NEW YORK CITY – A recent Thursday saw me racing around Manhattan. Receptions at the Union League Club and Hirschl & Adler Galleries followed a lunch at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel to launch the Spring Show NYC, the latest venture of the Art and Antique Dealers League of America. After a rugged winter, could spring be in the air?
 
The Spring Show NYC
With baby boomers beginning to retire, 60 prominent dealers in art and antiques are looking to counter one of the industry’s most ominous trends: aging collectors.  An innovative new fair organized by the Art and Antique Dealers League of America may be just the thing to wash away the gray. The Spring Show NYC is set for April 28 to May 2 at New York’s Park Avenue Armory.
 
“We’re reaching out,” said League president Clinton Howell, describing the fresh presentation that is specifically aimed at younger audiences.
 
“We want to attract a new generation of collectors,” added the show’s producer, Michael Franks, a dmg world media alum who also mounts the SOFA contemporary design shows in New York, Chicago and Santa Fe. The back-to-back Spring Show NYC and SOFA New York, which closes on April 17 at the Park Avenue Armory, are sharing some of their production costs, a smart move for both ventures. Scandinavian design authority Lars Bolander is advising on the look of the Spring Show NYC, so expect the installation to be anything but stodgy.
 
The League has put together an outstanding exhibitors’ list. Some of the headliners are Kentshire Galleries, Hyde Park Antiques, Philip Colleck, Ltd., Alfred Bullard, Foster-Gwin, Carlton Hobbs, Schiller & Bodo, Thomas Colville, Robert Simon, Abby M. Taylor, Jack Kilgore, Hill-Stone Inc., Douglas Dawson, Kevin Conru, Arthur Guy Kaplan, Leo Kaplan, Ltd., Jeff R. Bridgman and Peter Pap Oriental Rugs.
 
The League is working with the edgy New York Observer to reach 50,000 subscribers with a magazine-style catalogue. It is also partnering with nearly a dozen youth-oriented patrons groups, from the American Friends of the Louvre’s Young Patrons Circle and the Metropolitan Opera’s Young Associates to Christie’s and Bard Graduate Center alumni.
 
Tycoons-in-training Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are honorary co-chairs of Arts Night Out, the show’s Young Collectors Night on Friday, April 29. The event is sponsored by Antiques and Fine Art magazine, Doyle New York and Absolut vodka. Online vendor 1stDibs.com is hosting the April 27 preview party benefitting ASPCA.
 
Just to keep things hopping, the lively lecture series will feature Derek Ostergard on French design of the interwar years, Tim Knox on architecture for animals, Ruth Peltason on jewelry, Mario Buatta on decorating with antiques and Robert Thurman – yes, Uma’s dad - on Buddhist art.
 
Hirschl & Adler’s New Galleries
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, a standard bearer for American fine and decorative arts now approaching its sixtieth year, has moved from its townhouse galleries on East 70th Street to the historic Crown Building at 730 Fifth Avenue in the heart of midtown Manhattan.
 
We recently caught up with Elizabeth Feld, Hirschl & Adler’s managing director, from the floor of the Armory Show at New York’s Pier 92, where the gallery’s contemporary division was exhibiting through March 6.
 
“We’re in love,” Feld said of the firm’s new quarters. “The space is very contemporary and gives us the freedom to mount museum-like displays.”
 
On February 24, Hirschl & Adler had a soft opening in the Crown Building for contemporary artist John Moore, a painter of urban and industrial views.  An inaugural exhibition, “Masterworks: The Best of Hirschl & Adler,” opens on May 5.
 
“The show will include examples of the best from every area that we specialize in, from the eighteenth century to the present,” said Feld.
 
Woodbury’s Next Auction
Best known for fine Federal furniture, Woodbury, Ct., dealer Thomas Schwenke briefly escaped Litchfield County’s lingering snow to host a festive reception at the Union League Club on 37th Street.
 
The gathering provided a sneak preview of Woodbury Auction’s second anniversary sale of antiques and fine art, planned for Saturday, May 21.
 
Schwenke launched Woodbury Auction as an adjunct to his main business in 2009 in Woodbury, known as the antiques capital of Connecticut.
 
“The reception provided a venue for our clients to get together.  We have customers who still don’t know that we’ve started an auction house,” Schwenke explained.
 
Consignments for the May 21 sale, which features three collections plus estate material, are being accepted through April 15. To date, highlights include a New Jersey tall clock by Aaron Lane, a Baltimore Hepplewhite card table and a Charleston Pembroke table.
 
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NEW YORK CITY – Is America going to the dogs? Yes, judging by the surging popularity of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, whose legion of Facebook fans jumped to nearly 70,000 after judges named Hickory, a Scottish deerhound, the 2011 Best of Show on February 15.
 
The award capped a week when breeders, owners and lovers of dogs descended on Manhattan, crowding into Madison Square Garden and mingling at the dog-friendly Barkfest charity brunch on February 13, where treats and water bowls were on the menu.
 
Barkfest is jointly organized by the American Kennel Club and Bonhams, the international auction house whose Dogs in Show & Field sale on February 16 grossed roughly $800,000 including premium on 217 lots. The sale was 70 percent sold, said its organizer, Bonhams fine-arts expert Alan Fausel.
 
Terriers have taken the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show’s top award 45 times since 1907, more than twice as often as any other group. Judges have yet to throw a bone to two of America’s most popular breeds, the Labrador retriever and the golden retriever.
 
Does the dog world’s most prestigious prize influence the market for dog painting?
 
Not much, says William Secord, adding that show results do affect the public’s choice of pets. The leading dealer in antique and contemporary dog painting and portraiture recently opened “Canine Masters,” on view through March 26, at his 52 East 76th Street gallery in New York.  Secord skipped this year’s Palm Beach art and antiques shows to exhibit at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, where he meets prospective clients by the thousands.
 
Secord underbid Bonhams’ top lot, a 1912 oil on canvas portrait of the black Labrador Peter of Faskally and his mate, Dungavel Jet, by English-born artist Maud Earl (1864-1943). The father of 32 field trial champions, Peter of Faskally was the original bloodline for all chocolate Labs. A Scottish collector bought the painting for $103,700 including premium.
 
“Eight of our top ten lots were paintings of field dogs,” said Fausel, identifying the current demand for images of hunting animals. Collectors also look for exceptional paintings of champion purebreds by well-known artists. Genre scenes of pets, often depicted in cozy interiors, form the third and least robust part of the market. 
 
Sold for $6,222, a silver Tiffany & Co. bowl presented to the 1979 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show champion topped fifty lots of dogiana, including cameos, cufflinks, collars and trophies.
 
Not that Bonhams has the “macho market” all to itself. Coeur D’Alene, which bills itself as the nation’s largest auctioneer of Western and sporting painting, hosts its annual blockbuster sale in Reno, Nv., in late July.
 
On the East Coast, Copley Fine Arts also handles paintings of sporting dogs. “We’ve had great success with English setters, pointers and Springer spaniels,” says Copley chairman Stephen O’Brien, Jr., who does well with canvases by Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, Percival Leonard Rosseau and Edmund H. Osthaus. For its July 21-22 auction in Plymouth, Ma., Copley Fine Arts has secured a first-rate Aiden Lassell Ripley painting of two Springer spaniels and pheasant hunters. The work is expected to bring upwards of $200,000.
 
Hickory began her championship year with morning television appearances followed by a steak lunch at Sardi’s, the Manhattan theater district watering hole.
 
Sporting-arts enthusiasts were off to quail country for the February 24-27 Thomasville Antiques Show in Thomasville, Ga., home to some of the nation’s most spectacular hunting plantations. William Secord Gallery, Carswell Rush Berlin, Malchione Sporting Antiques and Red Fox Fine Art are listed among the fair’s thirty exhibitors. Guest lecturers will include designers Carolyn Roehm and Richard Keith Langham, along with ex-Sotheby’s vice chairman William W. Stahl, Jr., a foxhunter and conservationist with family ties to the area.

WILLIAMSBURG, VA. – The wealthy collectors who have been a fixture at the Colonial Williamsburg Antiques Forum since its founding 63 years ago no longer arrive with a chauffeur and a lady’s maid. They do still check in at the Colonial Williamsburg Inn, built in 1937 to the refined standards of its patron, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who made an art of Southern hospitality.
 
The Inn and adjacent Lodge is where participants in the February 20-24 Antiques Forum will rest up from a vigorous week of lectures, demonstrations, optional excursions and, yes, partying.  In addition to dozens of private gatherings at the Fat Canary, Blue Talon Bistro and other popular restaurants near William & Mary College, participants will high-tail it to two of the best parties of the year, one in nearby Yorktown, Va., and other on Colonial Williamsburg’s campus.
 
Bidding Adieu to Period Designs
On Wednesday, February 23, from 6 to 8:30 p.m., everyone with wheels will head to Yorktown, Va., for a farewell party for Period Designs. Owners Robert Hunter and Michelle Erickson are shuttering their 401 Main Street shop after 16 years. They are looking for another location nearby.
 
The marvel is that Rob and Michelle have time for a shop at all. A professional archaeologist and dealer in American and European antique pottery and porcelain, Rob edits the Chipstone Foundation journal, Ceramics in America and is scheduled to speak at the Antiques Forum on February 23. Hunter is a member of the team that organized “Art in Clay: Masterworks of North Carolina Earthenware,” opening at Old Salem Museums & Gardens in Winston-Salem, N.C., on March 22.
 
A ceramist, Michelle is known for her sharply comic social commentary, deep historical knowledge and imaginative reuse of motifs and techniques rooted in 17th and 18th century English ceramics.
 
“ Michelle has a remarkable business and benefits from an open shop, but she also needs studio space,” says Hunter. The couple, who rented their historic Yorktown quarters from the National Park Service, also want a venue for events and open houses.
 
“We plan a more aggressive web presence in the interim,” says Erickson. A solo show of her work, “Tradition & Modernity: The Ceramic Art of Michelle Erickson,” closed January 9 at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, Va.
 
Period Designs is discounting prices on some objects during its final week. The shop will be open February 19-27, from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. For details, call 757-886-9482 or go to perioddesigns.com.
 
Bourgeault’s BBQ
Tables fill up quickly at Ronald Bourgeault’s annual barbeque, this year planned for Tuesday evening, 6:30 to 9 pm on February 22, at the 1740s Shield’s Tavern at 422 East Duke of Gloucester Street, three blocks from the Inn.
 
“We’ve been hosting this party for ten years,” says Bourgeault, president of Northeast Auctions in Portsmouth, N.H. “In the beginning, we chartered a bus and took everyone to Pierce’s Pitt Bar-B-Q.  One year, Colonial Williamsburg’s president Colin G. Campbell and his wife, Nancy, said, ‘Why don’t you have your party at one of our taverns?’ We’ve been on campus ever since.”
 
Get Smart
This is not to imply that the Colonial Williamsburg Antiques Forum is all play and no work. On the contrary, this year’s symposium, “Decorative Arts Forensics: How We Know What We Know,” is packed with useful information for curators and collectors. Ever wonder how to authenticate a map? Determine if a print is genuine? Vet a chest of drawers? Colonial Williamsburg has a program for that, plus others providing tips on cutting-edge research techniques in our digitally savvy age.
 
For details, call 1-800-603-0948 or go to history.org.
 
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