Clarke County Fairgrounds again hosted the Springfield Antiques Show and Flea Market Extravaganza September 18′0 for more than 2,400 exhibitors who offered their inventories.
Always a big show, the September event usually is slightly smaller than its May Extravaganza, but, according to Jenkins Shows spokesman Jon Jenkins, “this September was our biggest ever show with attendance and exhibitors totals higher than ever in our history of the show.” He added he was pleased, with “sales reported to us as very good.”
Attendance totals were boosted with repeat guests as most tickets sold were for the weekend, allowing shoppers to return on ensuing days.
Sherry Spehar, a dealer from Brighton, Mich., was offering a booth filled with little things †no furniture, just antiques that could be transported in one hand or a shopping bag. In spite of the small nature of her collection, she said, “the show was the best I have ever had&⁵nbelievable how well I have done.”
Sue Gipe was showing early primitive furniture she has collected near her Covington, Ohio, home. Offerings included a pie safe believed to have been made in Virginia, circa 1800, and several pantry cupboards of varying sizes and shapes and all in old milk paint. She also carried a collection of small pantry boxes.
Country-style antiques are very popular at this show and that is the specialty for Miller House Antiques of nearby Carroll, Ohio. Linda and Ralph Miller work together on their collection within the limits of his full-time job to find the very early primitives they specialize in. Exhibiting in the front of one of the four buildings used for this event, they were offering an oversize sawbuck table that had been used early in the Eighteenth Century for dining, harvesting and many home farm jobs. The base was in blue milk paint with the horizontal stays forming a trough, which served as a keeper for the daily garden harvest. Also displayed was an early rocking chair, showing its nearly 200 years of careful use, and several small cupboards that held a variety of firkins and pantry boxes for the food storage.
Another dealer inside the building was Debbie Schlichter of Greenfield, Ohio, who also offered country antique furniture and accessories. A sawbuck table big enough for four to dine was the center of her exhibit, with an early pie safe to one side and a very early dry sink on another. All these pieces were in some early paint; the table was red, the pie safe green and the dry sink a very dark brown.
Collectors were having great fun with early finds over the weekend. Sharon and Russ Whitmore from Nashville, Ind., collect toys. Most of their collection at the show was key wind, with clock works in some and spring motors in some of the later models. In their exhibit for the weekend were dozens of pieces, including friction action beetles and flies, push toys and two very special pieces: a duck and a chicken, with key-wind action to move and flap their wings. These last two were priced at $450 each.
Tom and Rose Cheap of Period Antiques, Scottsburg, Ind., offered rural American antiques from the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries. Their display was showing a large assortment of painted pantry boxes as one of their favorite collections, along with furniture and many early signs.
Outside, dealers selling furniture included Mike Cohen of Lexington, Ky., and Fishers Antiques, Fishers, Ind., while Linda Christiansen, Indianapolis, was selling her collection of small antiques and collectibles. Munday and Munday, Benton, Ill., was offering yellowware and other early American forms of earthenware and stoneware.
The show is conducted on the third full weekend of every month except on the fourth weekend of June and no show in July. May and September are the two largest with more than 2,000 exhibitors, while in the summer months the totals are large, with fall and winter smaller. Many of the shows have a special “show in a show” managed by dealers, including Debbie Schlichter and Linda Miller in upcoming months.
For more information, www.springfieldantiqueshow.com or 937-325-0053.
