The American Antiques Show: Time Warner Center Was Better, and Worse, than Expected

NEW YORK CITY

:Since it debuted four years ago at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea, the American Antiques Show, which opened with a benefit for the American Folk Art Museum on Wednesday evening, January 19, and continued through Sunday, January 23, has grown in stature. There is no telling where its ambitious organizer, the museum, or its 47 exhibitors will take it from here. A favorite of many collectors, it is already in the top ranks of fairs nationwide.

Two unforeseen complications - a venue change and a blizzard - made the magnitude of its success this year hard to judge. Even so, most exhibitors seemed pleased with sales. Some even would like to see a permanent move uptown, something organizers say is next to impossible given the scarcity of facilities large enough to house a show.

First, the good news: Laura Parsons, president of the museum's board of trustees, helped secure space on the seventh and eighth floors (the upper floor was a café and coat check) of the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, Broadway and 59th Street, after a scheduling error on the museum's part forced organizers to either postpone the fair or find alternate quarters.

Barry D. Briskin, the show's executive chairman and the museum's treasurer, worked tirelessly for 12 months to make everything come together by opening night. Caroline Kerrigan, executive director of the show, and Josh and Sandy Wainwright, managers, oversaw a laborious installation, setup and breakdown that - because of a single, four-foot freight elevator - extended for weeks. Thanks to everyone's dedication, opening night attendance reached a new high and sales were strong through Friday. Collectors who stayed in town even managed to slip away from the auctions and get back to the show during the height of the storm. With its centrality and abundance of transportation, the Midtown location seemed a net plus.

Now the bad news :because Time Warner Center is a union facility and the space was unfinished, this year's show was at least twice as expensive to produce, Briskin said. The burden was absorbed by the museum and by exhibitors, whose booth rents increased by 30 percent or more.

"Rents were generally between $9,000 and $9,800, still a bargain for a great New York show," said one exhibitor.

Elevator shafts and restrooms bisected the difficult exhibition space. On one side of the obstructions, a wide aisle fronted nine high-ceilinged, sunlit booths that backed up against views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline. Seven of these nine booths were occupied by members of the dealers' committee.

"A core group of seven or eight dealers have made such an enormous difference to this show through their hard work," said Briskin, explaining how the spaces were allocated.

Most of the booths were to the side or the back of the elevator banks. Some exhibitors under the eighth floor overhang complained of dim or erratic lighting. Four exhibitors - one of them Marna Anderson, whose involvement in the museum dates to the 1970s and who was an original exhibitor at the Fall Antiques Show, precursor to the American Antiques Show - were easy to miss. They set up in a cul-de-sac not readily visible from elsewhere on the floor. The dealers' meeting, in the past held on Sunday morning, was cancelled, infuriating some exhibitors who were eager to voice their frustrations.

"We didn't hold a dealers' meeting because there was nothing to talk about in that we will be back at the Chelsea Pavilion next year. As for the floor plan, we did the best we could with the space we had," Briskin said the Tuesday afternoon after the show as pack-out continued.

Anderson's husband, Ernest Shaw, disagreed. "The fact that the show will be moving from this venue in no way negates the question of how this floor plan came about. I believe that the reason that there was no meeting is that no one wanted to address the issue of how decisions are made. The dealers' committee should represent all exhibitors. Its activities should be transparent."

Emphasizing the positive, Briskin noted, "We had a significantly larger group for opening night and more income. We consider the show a smashing success through Friday. I saw red dots all over the floor.

"Some of the dealers under the overhang did very well - Arne Anton, Phil Bradley, Trotta-Bono, for instance. I'm a firm believer that success has less to do with venue than with what a dealer brings, how he displays it and how he prices it," Briskin said.

Through brilliant publicity and an invigorated board, the American Antiques Show is attracting not only loyal stalwarts but a fashionable elite discovering folk art for the first time. Top collectors Joan and Victor Johnson, Robert and Kathy Booth and Jerry and Susan Lauren were on the floor opening night. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns came through, as did comedienne Whoopi Goldberg. A collector of African American art, she bought two works from John Ollman of Fleisher-Ollman. The Philadelphia specialist in Twentieth Century American self-taught art sold 75 two- and three-dimensional collages by Felipe Jesus Consalvos, a Cuban-American immigrant who died in 1957.

Explaining the appeal of Consalvos, who plastered cigar labels, bits of photographs and other oddments, and wry, subtlety subversive sentiments on just about everything, Ollman, who represents the artist's estate, said, "These works cross a lot of different borders. We have sophisticated photography collectors and contemporary collectors who are familiar with collage history. Consalvos is earlier than Joseph Cornell. It is rare to find a body of work that isn't altered by the attention of the marketplace. It's happened only twice in the last ten years, first with James Castle and now with Consalvos."

Representing the James Castle estate was the J. Crist Gallery of Boise, Idaho. "Castle was born profoundly deaf in 1900. He used trash and other bits of paper to create drawings, many of them remembrances of his family's farm near Boise," said gallery hand Chris Binion.

Forty-seven exhibitors, a few more than last year, offered the best of American country furniture and folk art, plus a smattering of big-city pieces. Perfect proportions, fine detail and beautiful tiger-maple grain recommended a diminutive Connecticut River Valley secretary bookcase in Nathan Liverant and Son's stand. The $385,000 case piece belonged to Nathan Hale, a contemporary of the patriot. A set of 11 Rhode Island Federal side chairs were $95,000.

First-time exhibitor Brian Cullity of Sagamore, Mass., showcased his expertise in pottery with an important eagle-decorated redware jug, $65,000 by John Betts Gregory, Clinton, N.Y., and a rope handled Wedgwood covered tureen, $7,500, surmounted by a classical figure of a woman astride a horse. Possibly by Reuben Swift of New Bedford, Mass., a tambour front Federal secretary desk inlaid with whalebone escutcheons was $22,500. Another dealer with a good collection of pottery, George Allen of Raccoon Creek, Oley Forge, Penn., appeared in the Style pages of the Sunday New York Timesembracing the shapely form of a Taunton, Mass., stoneware water cooler, $135,000, fashioned as a headless woman.

"This is only the second paint decorated kas on the market. We were thrilled to get it," Grace Snyder said of the Hudson Valley wardrobe, $95,000, in her booth.

"We had a good show. The intrepid New Yorkers definitely came out, but their enthusiasm was a little bit blunted by the weather," said New York dealer Jolie Kelter, who offered an Eighteenth Century Long Island blanket chest, a beautiful step back dresser, a set of six thumb back Windsor side chairs in yellow paint with transfer-printed decorations, $24,000, and a New England Windsor side chair with a five-spindle comb crest, $35,000.

There were two apothecary chests in blue paint on the floor. Jackie Radwin's 38-drawer chest, $26,000, and a 49-drawer chest, $52,000 at Allan and Penny Katz.

"This is the best of the best," Pine Plains, N.Y., dealer Jeff Cherry said of a three-fold, birchbark screen by the Adirondack's premier furniture maker, Ernest Stowe. Dating to circa 1905, the Saranac Lake, N.Y., piece, $26,000, was ornamented with star burst and fan motifs, hallmarks of Stowe's design. At Clifford A. Wallach, Brooklyn, N.Y., a tramp art sideboard illustrated inOne Notch At A Timewas $65,000.

The American Antiques Show and the Philadelphia Antiques Show are becoming more alike, the former adding Pennsylvania art and artifacts and the latter increasingly well-known for American folk art.

Among a cadre of leading Pennsylvania dealers in the American Show, Phil Bradley of Downingtown paired a Philadelphia Windsor settee, 79 inches long, in old mustard over green-black paint, $62,500, with a Philadelphia bonnet top highboy from the Claypoole Workshop, circa 1750, $275,000.

Ex-collection of Saturday Evening Posteditor and noted Americana collector George Horace Lorimer, a painted three-drawer Pennsylvania blanket chest of circa 1775 was $65,000 at H.L. Chalfant Antiques. The West Chester, Penn., dealer also featured a Edward Duffield Philadelphia tall bonnet-top tall clock, $75,000.

First-time exhibitors Don and Trish Herr raided their private collection to present some real treasures. The Lancaster, Penn., dealers sold their catalog piece, a circa 1820 Maine embroidered wool bed covering - pieced, quilted and embroidered - with linsey-woolsey backing, $7,800. Winterthur owns a quilt from the same group; James Julia was to auction a third in late January.

Still in its park paint, a carousel horse by Philadelphia carver Gustav Dentzel was $49,500 at Greg Kramer & Co. The Robesonia, Penn., dealer also showed a cast iron and zinc firehouse eagle with a six-foot wingspan, $135,000, and a painting of a Berks County almshouse by Louis Mader. The oil on zinc work, $95,000, was once in the collection of American Folk Art Museum founder Herbert Hemphill.

At Oddfellows Antiques, a circa 1900 painted wood sculpture, ex-collection of the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum, was $32,000. "White Head," as the sculpture is called, is illustrated in Hemphill's Folk Sculpture USA, the catalog to a pioneering 1976 exhibition.

Charlton Bradsher of Asheville, N.C., featured back-country Southern furniture and folk art. A whimsical Piedmont secretary desk in blue paint was $35,000; a triple portrait by Huntsville, Ala., painter William Carroll Saunders, $22,000. The show's other Southern dealer, Charleston Renaissance Gallery, Charleston, S.C., featured a marble bust of Andrew Jackson by Ferdinand Pettrich (1798-1872), $24,000.

Stephen O'Brien of Boston, one of two decoy specialists on the floor, unveiled three birds by A.E. Crowell, the renowned Cape Cod carver. Two 1915 shorebirds in original paint were $35,000; a 1912 merganser, an early hunting model with Crowell's brand, was $25,000.

"We did extremely well," said Russ Goldberger, who combined decoys with weathervanes and painted furniture. "We sold a number of really good weathervanes, including a double horse and sulky attributed to Harris & Co. and two Jewel horses, folk sculpture, a painted blanket chest and a one-drawer stand."

The New Hampshire dealer, who returned to two feet of snow back home, added, "It was clearly advantageous being uptown. We did business with people we haven't seen since we last did the Fall Antiques Show at the Seventh Regiment Armory."

Blazing John Keith Russell's back wall was a 53-inch-long horse weathervane, $48,000. "Three of these are known. This one belonged to Woodard & Greenstein," said the South Salem, N.Y., dealer.

A shop sign found in Nantucket, Mass., $28,500, was a standout at Jim and Judy Milne's. Michigan dealers Tim and Pam Hill rode into town with a life-sized Texas cavalry training horse, circa 1890, $38,000. Ballyhack Antiques of Cornwall, Conn., had several rare pieces of anniversary tinware, including a bouquet and shoes.

"It was a great show. We sold all of our trade signs: the dentist's tooth, the millenary trade sign, an optician's sign, and a Campbell's Soup sign," New Haven, Conn., dealer Allan Katz said, having just come from filming a segment on tobacco trade figures for Antiques Road Show FYI. "We also sold an important slave pictorial made around 1870."

The Cooley Gallery displayed "Winter Village," $45,000, by Carl Lawless, a Mystic, Conn., artist whose study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts may have contributed to the New Hope School aura of the canvas. The Old Lyme, Conn., fine arts dealers paired Bessie Potter Vonnoh's "Water Lily," a 29-inch bronze, $75,000, with Frank Vincent Du Mond's "Lily," $35,000, an oil painting of the same model, thought to have been a Du Mond child.

Peter Eaton and Joan Brownstein combined their expertise to show New England furniture - including three bow front chests, two highboys and a lowboy - and an extensive selection of folk portraiture. Among the paintings were twin portraits of the Thayer sisters by Joseph Whiting Stock, $65,000, and a primitive painting on panel in its original grain-painted frame for the same price. Miniatures included Mrs Moses B. Russell's double portrait of Alice and Alfred Hunnewell, $18,500; and two Jacob Maentel marriage portraits of Lydia Ernst and Samuel Richardson, $19,500.

Boston dealer Stephen Score offered William Matthew Prior's "Little Girl in a Red Dress," signed and dated 1852. Samuel Herrup's sophisticated presentation showcased Continental precedents for American vernacular art. The Sheffield, Mass., dealer displayed a 1789 portrait of Ann Marie Nisoli, a stylishly dressed Italian girl holding a bird. An English hunt picture was $24,000; an Italian settee, $18,000; and a japanned chest, possibly Swedish, $18,000.

Jan Whitlock's beautiful yarn-sewn "Critter" rug, $125,000, of circa 1810 combined a gigantic basket of flowers with tiny tree and animals, all enclosed in a trailing vine border. The 58- by 24-inch textile is illustrated in Joel and Kate Kopp's American Hooked and Sewn Rugsof 1975. It was owned by Betty Sterling at the time.

From the Mrs Lydia Rouse School in Hartford, Conn., Lucy Leavitt's silk work picture of 1802 was $75,000 at Van Tassel Bauman American Antiques of Malvern, Penn.

Amy and Morris Finkel unveiled two very early New England textiles. One, a band sampler, $48,000, worked by Mary Akin and dated 1715, is the earliest known Newport sampler and is listed in Bolton & Coe. A 1762 Boston canvas work picture depicting Adam and Eve still has stitcher Elizabeth Ballard's needle pinned to the fabric. The Finkels sold an important Lititz Moravian School silk memorial by Margaret Pennington. The memorial illustrates the back cover of Trish Herr's classic reference on Lititz School embroidery.

"Our show was terrific, but it was made in the first two days. The slightly less expensive sorts of purchases that get made by lots of people over the weekend were off," said Amy Finkel. "The Newport sampler is under consideration by an important Midwest collection and an institution is considering the 1762 Boston canvas work picture. We sold about a dozen very good pieces besides those."

A Baltimore album quilt, $48,000, formerly in the Esprit Collection, graced Laura Fisher's back wall. "I had a great Saturday. I sold from morning to night," said the New York dealer. "It was wonderful - and this was with the weather warnings! On Sunday I didn't make a sale."

Finely stitched and in fresh, bright condition, another Baltimore album-style quilt from the Mid-Atlantic was for sale at Elliott and Grace Snyder. The circa 1845 textile was made by Elizabeth Livingston.

Marna Anderson of New Paltz, N.Y., sold an Amish crib quilt on opening night. A full-size trade caving of an Indian medicine man in her stand was $85,000.

Ricco/Maresca's "Scenes from American Life," a humorous quilt of circa 1930, $175,000, depicted such mundane events as golf and yardwork. The quilt illustrates the back cover of Robert Bishop and Carleton Safford's American Quilts and Coverlets. Harvey Antiques, Evanston, Ill., had an abstract African American pieced quilt in solid colors, $4,800.

An excellent selection of Native American art ranged from George Catlin drawings at Marcy Burns American Indian Arts; to a circa 1880 Yupik mask, $120,000 and a mid-Nineteenth Century Huron beaded cloth cover, $35,000 at Trotta-Bono of Shrub Oak, N.Y.; and a Navajo Second Phase chief's blanket, $125,000, and a Cayuse Crow pony-beaded blanket strip, circa 1850, $55,000, at David Cook of Denver. The Catlin portraits of individual tribal leaders were taken from a volume acquired by the Duke of Portland (the other nine Catlin volumes are in museums) and ranged from about $28,000 to $37,000.

Vernacular photography was introduced to the American Antiques Show a year ago by Andrew Flamm and Michelle Hauser. The Augusta, Maine, dealers returned this year with a selection of snapshots and offbeat portraits from about $150 up.

"Vernacular photography bridges a lot of different boundaries. One boundary is folk art," said Flamm, noting the combination of naiveté and imagination in the assembled works. Two newcomers to the show, Robert Klein of Boston and Charles Isaacs of New York, offered only photography. Isaacs classic images included "Moonrise, Hernandez," $75,000, by Ansel Adams. The image once held the record price for American photography.

Asked if he would continue as chairman of the American Antiques Show even after the ordeal of 2005, Briskin joked, "I would love to pass it along but no one wants it. It will continue to be my baby."

"Josh and Sandy Wainwright worked under extreme pressure and never lost their cool. Barry Briskin was tireless," said Jolie Kelter, one of many exhibitors offering praise.

Agreed Russ Goldberger, "Heroic steps were taken on the part of the management, the museum and the dealers. The American Antiques Show has matured. It is a fabulous asset, both for the museum and for the industry in general."