Chuck Thompson and Tim Mahon said they put more than $500 worth of gas into their venerable, white 2002 van (320,000 miles on the odometer, so far) to get from St Petersburg, Fla., to the Brimfield Antiques Show this year †50 percent more than last year. Tellingly, however, the pair, who specialize in estate jewelry, made this point while waiting for the gates to open at May’s field, proving that despite soaring gas prices, Brimfield is an irresistible magnet for the antiques and collectibles trade. Gasoline was dear, the weather unpredictable, yet many of the week’s show promoters reported one of their busiest weeks in a long time.
May 13 marked the beginning of this year’s antiques flea markets in the sleepy little town too far from any city to be a suburb, but too close to be farm country. It is a marketplace known throughout the country and even throughout the world as the place to find antiques popular in America. There are tinkers and peddlers, collectors and dealers, all there for that great find, the special something that probably has not seen the light of day for many years erchandise plucked from attics and barns, all but forgotten; the heirloom from the aunt that her nephew could not use; the houseful of furniture that estate lawyers had to convert into cash.
Brimfield happens three times each year †May, July and September †but this first gathering each year has a special air of excitement. The time is right for dealers to sell for great value the inventories they have built up over the winter months; to raise some cash. Buyers are there to stock up, looking for the pieces they can place in the living room or in a shop window.
On May 12 dealers began arriving at their favorite exhibition fields, and while selling is not allowed by the town’s zoning rules, there was still a great deal of discussion among friends about what they brought or might add to their collections. During the night, the merchandise begins to come out of the cars, vans, trucks and trailers with many people touring the fields with flashlight and cash or check books.
In the early dawn of Tuesday, the stretch of the highway leading into town was swarming with fast-walking, serious looking shoppers wearing backpacks, pushing shopping carts or pulling wagons looking at all the dozen fields opening that morning. As early as 5:30 am, the coffee stands have lines and parking lots are doing a land office business.
During the week, there are about 20 different fields, lots or selling venues. Some are small with 50 to 100 exhibitors, while others are big, such as May’s and J&J Promotions with more than 600 dealers.
On Tuesday there are at least a dozen that open with no charge to visitors; only the dealers pay the field operator. They are all on Route 20, beginning immediately west of the village with Mahogany Ridge and continuing about a mile to Green Acres.
At a few minutes before 11 am, Dealer’s Choice on the south side of Route 20 and at the western end of the activities opened early. The size of the crowd was so vast that people were massed onto the traveling lanes of the highway waiting to enter. This phenomenon was repeated many times over the week with reports from paid admission field promoters that they were seeing extremely high attendance. Brimfield Acres North, just across the street from Dealer’s Choice, also opens with an admission charge at 1 pm, and likewise had to let the public in a few minutes early to clear the street from the hazard.
Sales at the early fields were excellent from all reports that day. Green Acres has many tented spaces, but one of its most popular is known unofficially as the Vermont Tent, with several dealers from the Green Mountain state. Reports were that those dealers were all smiles with the good sales.
Dealer’s Choice was not to be missed. Three men sharing one tent sold a total of more than $7,000 in two hours at that market. There was an Oriental rug, a tribal Caucasian that went to New Orleans for $900; a New Hampshire worktable with tiger maple base and pine top tagged at $550 to Ohio and a tapestry for $1,250, among their sales.
Dave Straight was selling from his exhibit at the entrance to Brimfield Acres North a collection of early furniture. His antiques and auction business is headquartered in Sturbridge, Mass. Claire Schlesser of New York City does her shopping in France for early iron household implements. An umbrella spit, so called for its shape, was drawing a good deal of attention. Jill Rotter from Kensington, Md.,. had a signed silhouette by Auguste Frost, dated 1841 and priced at $850.
Sales were very good on these Tuesday fields with what appeared to be record-breaking crowds. Tim May, owner of the most accessible parking lot in the neighborhood, was full before 8 am, an indication of the high level of activity.
New England Motel
Buying was brisk Wednesday starting early at New England Motel where Bill and Trish Huestis of Mountain Thistle Antiques, Waynesboro, Va., were having their best showing at Brimfield in more than ten years.
“Brimfield was absolutely brilliant. They came to buy and they did,” said the dealers. “We had sales to people from all over the country and abroad †strong euro, weak dollar. They bought at every price level from $100 to thousands.” Sales included a fine hand carved Black Forest clock garniture three-piece set, circa 1900.
New York City-based Vintage Pastelle’s best single sale was a vintage painted Victorian high oak bed and a painted kitchen cupboard, along with an Edwardian silk and lace boudoir dressing coat.
Being the lone dealer carrying Swedish merchandise on this field resulted in some madness for Jeff Turney of Lone Ranger Antiques, Hollywood, Fla., as the gate opened. “This lady ran into the booth and started putting sold tags on lots of pieces. She never looked at the prices. It looked like Christmastime with so many red pieces of paper flying around in the wind,” Turney said. He will be on a buying trip to Sweden during the summer edition of Brimfield, but said he will double the size of his booth to 100 feet wide for the fall show.
Heart-O-The-Mart
Susan Walter Antiques, Montpelier, Vt., wrote up tickets at Heart-O-The-Mart for buyers from near and far, from Pennsylvania and New York to California, Oklahoma and even the Netherlands.
Sales were diverse and lively and included a large vintage Acoma pot, an early Sioux beaded bag, unusual cast iron banks in the form of an owl, a rooster and an elephant on a tub, as well as a folky horse weathervane that will soon decorate a clothing shop in the New York vicinity and a modernist female nude painting that was found at a Paris flea market.
Pottery was the stock and trade for Ann Marie O’Neill, Duxbury, Mass., and sales surpassed her expectations. Interest was heavy for redware pitchers decorated with polka dots and her sales included two key pieces of Jasper, the rustic pottery from France that she said has become quite popular in the last few years. Quimper pottery also performed well.
Sales are what bring dealers to Brimfield, but the camaraderie the event inspires keeps them coming back with smiles on their faces no matter how high gas prices climb.
The Silver Butler, Philadelphia, sold well here and at May’s the following day. Dealers Tim Kiser and Gil Hahn likened Brimfield to a family reunion and said they have a group of mothers and daughters who travel from Alaska to see them at Brimfield as well as a group of “five sisters” who have a good-hearted competition to see which one makes it into the booth first or buys the best thing.
“Come rain or shine, good times or bad, Brimfield is an institution we love and hope to attend for many years to come,” they said.
Hertan’s
At the noon opening of Hertan’s field, Paul Berkowitz of Great Stuff By Paul Antiques, Frederick, Md., was quickly besieged by customers, but he was not complaining. “I did very well; it was like the old days,” he said. “People were buying this time, they were fighting to get the stuff off the truck and were helping me unload,” he said.
The 15-plus-year Brimfield veteran estimates he sold 65 percent of his merchandise, and pack-out took him just under an hour.
“I usually bring more smalls. This time I brought a lot of old pottery and urns. It was phenomenal.”
Berkowitz’s sales included antique Flow Blue pottery from China, olive oil urns from Turkey that went quickly, old cook pots in a variety of sizes from China and beer hall tables from Germany that practically flew out of his booth.
Bob Smith, Montrose, Penn., always does well at Brimfield and this year was no exception. He wrote up tickets for a rare late Eighteentharly Nineteenth Century standing spool rack with dovetailed and pegged construction, a miniature spice chest in robin’s-egg blue paint over red primer, a rare splint hand broom, a nice set of four Pennsylvania half-spindle side chairs in paint decoration on a yellow ground, an unusual Pennsylvania or New York milk curing table in its original ochre-grained paint, a folky green-over-red Windsor arm chair and a “Restaurant †Ladies and Gents” sign.
May’s Antique Market
Umbrellas were unfurled and ponchos donned as sprinkles became a steady downpour one-half hour into the opening of May’s Antique Market on Thursday. A few dealers seemed conflicted over whether to fully unpack †field rules stipulate that no merchandise can be displayed prior to the 9 am start †or keep their wares in their vans until the rain let up. Sandy Doig of Somers, Conn., was one of the intrepid sort, putting his early American furniture out †but under a canopy †as customers rushed onto the field.
Before the rain became earnest, Krista Grinfeld of Brooklyn, N.Y., took time out from unpacking and setting up her display of paintings to point out a Nineteenth Century portrait by George Svendsen.
It was not an auspicious start for ephemera or fine art dealers, but rain-resistant items, like the silver plated punch bowl, tray and ladle gathering a patina of raindrops at the stand of Mark and Sue Carpenter from Lackport, N.Y., required less care. “It’s been good. We’re selling like crazy,” exclaimed Mark Carpenter as the umbrella-toting crowd filed past.
With 600 dealers, May’s offers some of everything. Americana, including vintage game boards out of Maine and a Nineteenth Century optometrist trade sign, could be found at Terry Cormier’s Hope Antiques from Wickford, R.I. Another Americana dealer, Colette Donovan, Merrimacport, Mass., was doing good commerce. She sold a braided rug in the show’s opening hour and also displayed a Waldoboro hooked floral rug from the Nineteenth Century. Stoneware was in good supply at Tom Keady’s, an upstate New York dealer in business since 1987, but having his first year at May’s. One of his highlights was a 5-gallon jug, circa 1880, advertising in cobalt script “Winchell & Davis Wholesale Wines & Liquors, Albany, N.Y.”
Early American furniture is the calling card of Bill Kelly. The Limington, Maine, dealer for this show brought a three-drawer New England blanket chest, mid-Eighteenth Century, that had its original brasses.
Midcentury Modern design aficionados could find plenty to enthuse about displayed by Karen Marquis of Brookfield, Conn. She had a colorful Guido Gambone vase and a pinwheel table by Danish designer Peter Hvit.
Elsa Zukin of West Chester, Penn., exhibits her collection of antique and estate jewelry only at May’s and has been doing so for 30 years. She said she loves to see the rain “because that means the people who come to see me are here to buy. Weather doesn’t make any difference to them.”
Looking a bit like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, a robot sculpture assembled from found parts by a Vietnam veteran who lives in the White Mountains region of New Hampshire was one of three such sculptures showcased by Ken Arthur of Spotted Horse Antiques, Brownsville, Vt. Arthur said he saw a picture of the artist’s work in a magazine and it struck a childhood chord.
Childhood memories were also on tap under the canvas tent set up by Richard Smith of New York City. He had a restored Buddy L bus from the 1930s, as well as a fire-engine red Indian safety tire bicycle from the mid-1920. It was his first time showing at May’s.
There are some purchases that require much more than a backpack or rolling cart, and such was the case with a Mullins steel rowboat from the 1920s that was being shown by H.E. Ross, Northampton, Mass. Mullins boats, created by William Mullins of Salem, Ohio, after he and a duck hunting buddy had a near disaster in a wooden boat, were fashioned from galvanized steel; more than 100,000 boats in various models were produced for 40 years.
Another more timely relic of the 1920s was a visible gas pump being offered by Hank Garrity of Lowell, Mass., who said he was having a “good morning” despite the rain. He said the pump’s visibility feature was prized in the days when the purity of gasoline was not always a guarantee.
A rare metal Dobro resonator guitar from the mid-1930s featuring Brazilian rosewood and with its original case was among the musical instruments offered by Larry Cavalieri of Newburyport, Mass. Donning a glass slide on his left ring finger, the dealer demonstrated why this rare piece of musical Americana had a $2,500 price tag as a chunky blues riff cut through the soggy air on the north end of the field.
J&J Promotions
On Friday, May 19, J&J Promotions opened on the original field that started it all on a bright, cool morning at 6 am. Jill Reid Lukesh and Judy Reid Mathieu are the daughters of the late Gordon Reid, the man who began the Brimfield pilgrimage in 1959. “I haven’t seen such a long line for so many years; its wonderful,” Judy said. Indeed, one line traversed the “bridge” and meandered up and down rows of parked cars in Mays’ parking lot, and the other flooded Route 20 too far to see the end. A longtime Brimfield aficionado said to Tim May as he watched the line forming, “I have spent myself into the poorhouse this year. It’s the best show in five years.”
The crowd found lots of items worth rushing for. Right at front, Ken Woodbury had the soulful sounds of Billie Holiday heating up the air from one of his vintage phonographs. The Keene, N.H., dealer has been coming “since it began” with authentic, working examples such as an 1897 Colombia Graphaphone from the Bridgeport, Conn., manufacturer. Several of the phonographs that Woodbury set up had the original horns handpainted by a local artist.
At another New Hampshire dealer’s booth, P-B Antiques from Peterborough, the owners were laughing as a customer stood in front of the booth and announced in a very loud voice, “I am going to the back, I heard there’s Tiffany back there,” in the hopes of getting the crowd to move away from the booth so he could check out the vintage tools, McCoy, cast iron doorstops and a set of “tomato” ware from the early 1950s occupied Japan.
Not everyone is a longtime exhibitor. From Shelburne, Vt., Sally and Brianne Riley came to see if they could “sell the things we love, which is all we buy.” Brianne’s, a retail vintage chic for the home shop named for the daughter, was offering a pair of folding fishing chairs with a narrow drop front panel hiding a shelf for lures or lunch. A pair of early Twentieth Century sconces in a flowery pattern hung over the chairs and a signed, painted chest in original finish rounded out the vignette.
Tucked way in the back, side-by-side, where they always set up, were Gene LaParle from Newport, R.I., and Paul DeCoste from Newburyport, Mass. LaParle was showing tall case clocks, a ship’s diorama, circa 1850s, and many oil paintings, such as one with a nautical theme, showing the sail/steam ship Gaelic steaming across a rough sea.
Tall case clocks are his specialty, however. LaParle was setting up a Dutch, mid-Eighteenth Century clock by Pieter Geers of Amsterdam. Standing next to it was a John Kaye, London, 1780, clock with a beautiful inlaid bird on the front case.
Next door, DeCoste’s booth was filled with some rare and valuable items: a large (about 24 inches across) burl bowl in beautiful condition had a $5,000 tag; next to it was an early Twentieth Century sailor’s valentine. But when asked, DeCoste showed off a couple of prizes: two medical boxes, one circa 1830s with a “hidden” compartment on the back where the poison bottles were secured. Complete and in excellent condition, the box also had its original key. Then there was a mid-Eighteenth Century German medical box, which he dated by the bottles having pontil scars. It, too, was complete with all bottles and instructions on their use. Another special item on view was a ship’s sprit designed to hold the flag on the stern. It was an African American figure with tobacco leaf skirt and headdress, and very rare DeCoste explained, which is why he was asking $15,000 for it.
According to Yesteryear’s Jim Marquis, “the rarest thing on the field” was a sampler dated 1646, in an old frame and done in what appeared to be silk. It was in remarkably good condition, “still readable” the Wallingford, Vt., dealer pointed out.
Jim Johannes might dispute Marquis’s claim. He had a very early Roseville majolica vase, Solomon Bell pottery, a Fulper Bros crock with a whimsical painted fish and boxes †many, many boxes †such as an early dovetailed candle box at $350, some early Columbian ware (granite ware) from Columbus, Ohio, and collection of rare mechanical cherry pitters and a Pennsylvania dry sink in original paint with four graduated dovetailed drawers. Johannes said he had a warehouse in Barto, Penn., “filled with boxes. I like boxes. The maker could show off his skill by putting numerous dovetails and another could make a candle box with a secret drawer and a lock.”
Searching for Modern at J&J’s was somewhat difficult this year. However, a Noguchi marble top table and Eames flower pot were displayed at A&M Antiques, Hartford, Conn. The blue pot on metal folding legs was sold and a collector was inspecting a set of four Mission chairs in original leather.
Rob and Ruth Lyon West were near the front of the field that held almost 800 dealers, with a combination of Civil War and decorative arts items. Rob Lyon showed an 1860 rifle from Europe for $800. “If this were American-made,” he said, “it would be at least double that amount.” But to make up for the rifle’s regrettable provenance, West was also offering a Union private’s forage cap in beautiful condition for $3,500.
“The economy is good at Brimfield,” Lukesh and Mathieu said. “Even with gas soaring, this is the busiest May we’ve had in many, many years.” A sentiment most dealers echoed.
