If New Year’s Eve signifies champagne and Times Square, then New Year’s Day belongs to the Birchwood Manor Antiques Show, which rings in the new year.
JMK Shows’ event January 1″ filled the ballrooms of this posh venue with a goodly assortment of antiques, from fine furniture to paintings and works on paper, china to glassware and pottery, folk art and artifacts and more.
Among the dealers represented was Coleman & May, Annandale, Va., which offered a great piece with crossover appeal, an oversized folky American wooden trade sign carved in the form of a skeleton key, circa 1920‴0s, as well as a large carved and painted wood eagle-flag banner in the style of Bellamy, circa 1910″0.
Fine paintings were on offer at Art & Antique Gallery, Worcester, Mass., which featured an Everett Shinn (American, 1876‱953) painting of people hurrying out of a snowstorm, autumn landscape by Sydney Lawrence and a small but fetching David Burliuk oil of a young girl with a horse by a stream.
Standouts at J&M Antiques, East Amherst, N.Y., included a Horner New York City block front slant desk with fine brass and mother-of-pearl inlay, circa 1900; a George Armfield painting of a quintet of dogs lolling around a folky green wagon; and a New England Federal chest in cherry, circa 1815, with original brasses.
Fine art for the wall, shelf or atop furniture was plentiful at Commonwealth Antiques and Fine Art, Rock Hill, S.C., from a Minton sculpture of a water nymph, signed and dated 1862, to a pair of Picasso hand-signed works published by Leiris, Paris, and a gilt-framed oil painting signed Wagner.
Ken’s Antiques, which operates out of the Summit Antiques Center and the Shore Antique Center, Allenhurst, N.J., came to the show with fine pottery offerings, several cases of smalls and jewelry, as well as a trio of fetching fur coats from the 1930s to 1950s.
Colophon Books, Layton, N.J., showed an “Investigator” microscope signed Bausch & Lomb Optical Co. and patented October 3, 1876, and fine ephemera, such as a 1793 Pennsylvania land patent signed by Thomas McKean, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Fine bound editions included Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield and a three-volume Conquest of Mexico .
Vintage Matters, Mount Bethel, Penn., is known for bookends and this show featured 40 pairs. A standout was a rare pair of gladiator bookends, made in 1915 by the Kathodion Bronze Works, New York City, which advertised their “‘Artbronz’ products to beautify your home.”
Noble Peddler Antiques, Torrington, Conn., showed a lovely grouping of Quimper fish plates, majolica, and many cat figurines, as that is the dealer’s collecting fancy, while Cony Damato, New York City, showed a lovely Rookwood vase, circa 1903, signed by Fred Rothenbush and a Steuben glass sculpture “Zephyr.”
Peter and Claire Ringel, Pennington, N.J., offered a lovely trio of openwork Irish Belleek baskets, 1920‱950, and among the dealers’ glassware, the standout had to be a rare Waterford vase with an etched scene of a family in prayer. The vase was likely a commissioned piece.
Carol Kooperman, Blue Bell, Penn., had her usual booth filled with the finest of majolica, from large pieces, such as cheese keepers and a rooster figure, but it was a grouping of small whimsical pieces that caught the eye, including a frog musician wearing a hat and coat.
Kyle Kinter Antiques, Lambertville, N.J., offered a modern abstract harbor scene signed Lincoln and a large, double-handled Italian pot with a lion’s head in relief, measuring around 20 inches tall.
The twice-a-year show will return to Birchwood Manor in July. For more information, www.jmkshows.com or 973-927-2794.
