The Emporium, a spotlessly clean former horse barn, housed seven dealers who specialized in vintage and antique garden collectibles.

Review & Onsite Photos by Madelia Hickman Ring

POOLESVILLE, MD. — It takes time for an antiques show to plant roots and take off, but thanks to the dedication and hard work of director Joy Siegel, the Mid Atlantic Antique & Garden Festival (MAA&GF) is well on its way to becoming, as more than one dealer told us, “the Roundtop Show of the East Coast,” referring to the twice-annual mega show in Texas.

Aix la Chappelle Farm, the event’s venue, is a cluster of nearly a dozen white barns and outbuildings on 180 sprawling acres in Maryland’s Montgomery County. Charmingly situated among vineyards, orchards and pick-your-own farms within an hour’s drive of Washington, DC, the show’s seventh edition took place October 25-26 and enjoyed beautifully crisp weather both days and 6,000 visitors, with many returning on the second day.

“It began as a passion project,” Siegel told Antiques and The Arts Weekly. “There is no other show like this around here and we attract a lot of dealers who used to do antiques shows in Baltimore. The farm, which my family purchased 10 years ago as a non-profit for the rescue, adoption and care of farm and domestic animals, hosts wedding and corporate events as well as the Fall Old Line Market for vintage and artisan garden. We had less-than-ideal weather the first couple of years but we have built open-air pavilions on the property and have food trucks and wine vendors to make it possible to spend a good part of a day here. We are grateful to the dealers who have stood by us. Last fall, we had 2,500 people all weekend; we had that many on our first day and 4,000 this whole weekend. I personally spoke with many people that drove in three hours, someone from Michigan, someone from Georgia, people from all over Long Island, West Virginia and Delaware… and of course, most of our crowd is from Maryland, DC and Virginia. Buyers are treating our show as a ‘travel-to-destination.’”

Bruce Emond looked comfortable in this wing chair, which he sold. The Village Braider, Plymouth, Mass.

The Barrel Barn — a long building with large open doorways that may once have been a carriage barn — hosted a number of dealers, including Bruce Emond and David Erskine of The Village Braider. Several things Emond had were already removed when we came through on Sunday morning but a wing chair, tapestry, owl-form lantern and a portrait of a dog were still in situ, sporting red “sold” tags.

Next to Village Braider, Nostalgia Fine Art had traveled all the way from Atlanta and showed antique and giclee sets of sporting, botanical and insect prints, as well as modern art prints. Matt Culberson is a second-generation dealer who started out helping his antiques dealer father but now specializes in prints. He said pattern prints, Art Deco and bugs and butterfly prints were doing well at the show, as well as individual prints.

A few dealers were grouped towards the end of the Barrel Barn, including Francis Crespo Folk Art & Antiques, Jane Langol Antiques, Tripping Quilts and McElwain Antiques. Doug McElwain specializes in vintage and antique collegiate sporting collectibles and had a good selection of school pennants and team photos. It was his first time at the show, and he was impressed with the turnout and pleased with how he’d done so far. He noted that at most of the antiques shows he goes to, he sells to women who are decorating their kids’ rooms or buying for their husbands. The exception to that is the annual National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago, which he said is “95 percent men.” One of his rarest pieces — which sported a blue ribbon denoting it as one of the pieces singled out by interior decorators — was a 1900 team photo of the University of Pennsylvania rowing crew at a Washington, DC, regatta.

Decoys with Jane Langol, Medina, Ohio.

“I had a wonderful Saturday: in the first 45 minutes, I sold $3,500 worth,” Langol happily reported. She told us she has been every MAA&GF except the first one. “I had interest in pottery and textiles, primarily, and sold three dominant pieces early on. I sold an expensive decoy to a new collector and an expensive quilt to a previous client. Everyone has been very cordial and I am particularly impressed because the majority of people who have come seem to be in the 35-50 age group.”

The Dairy Barn housed a dozen dealers, including Newcastle, Maine, folk art dealers, Tom Jewett and Butch Berdan. “Yesterday, we sold a $7,500 Belsnickel, another Belsnickel for $1,850 and a whirligig similar to one at Colonial Williamsburg,” Jewett told us. Their booth included some good weathervanes, painted furniture, holiday and — dominating one entire wall and sporting a blue ribbon — a 5½-foot-tall folk art portrait of a young girl that dated to circa 1845.

Down the aisle from Jewett and Berdan, Bradbury Ketelhut returning to the show for the third time. He brought an eclectic mix of things: one wall had “View of Céret, France” by Pinchus Kremegne, circa 1960, hung above Jenness Cortez’s horseracing painting titled “Catching the Winnter,” while the opposite wall had three prominent marine paintings that dated from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. A folding table, covered in black cloth, was topped by an early Nineteenth Century American blanket chest from Pennsylvania that was flanked by two small, abstracted figures: a root carving of a man, ex Arne Anton, and Aaron Ashkenazi’s bronze “The Cellist.”

Jewett-Berdan Antiques, Newcastle, Maine.

“It was unbelievably busy with qualified people, and from start to finish, I felt like I was busy talking to people or selling something,” Ketelhut told this reporter. “What Joy is doing so well is creating a market using both traditional and social media networking that kept the energy there the entire time.”

“I sold so much yesterday, it’s why I have so little left,” noted Sabina A. Wood. “Most of my buyers were from DC.” The Northeast Harbor, Maine, dealer still had a good selection of pottery, prints and jewelry on hand.

Wood’s neighbor at the end of the Dairy was David Beauchamp, who had sold a pair of wing chairs and four to five paintings. One of the pieces he showed us as noteworthy was a Federal bowfront chest he said was from the Seymour workshop of Boston. It was topped with an English satinwood bottle box.

Across from Beauchamp was majolica expert Linda Ketterling, who does a half-dozen shows a year. Among the pieces we liked were a pair of Hugo Lonitz quail-form stands, made in Saxony, Germany, circa 1870, and a candlestand with a naturalistically-rendered base in the form of a stag horn. Though she was busy speaking with shoppers, she was happy to tell us that she’d sold several pieces on the first day and was “impressed” at the number of interested people who were in attendance.

Linda Ketterling Antiques, Toledo, Ohio.

The farm’s Washington Pavilion is a bespoke building recently erected to shelter dealers from the elements and has optional side walls. Palm Beach Estate Antiques had most of one side of the pavilion as well as the surrounding lawn space for their garden and Midcentury Modern furniture. At one end, Jim Hensley, Mountain Moon Antiques, and his wife Amy Edwards had one of his specialties, fire-tempered cast iron cookware.

“Yesterday, I made a sale every seven minutes,” Hensley told us. “This show has the potential to become the ‘Roundtop’ of the East Coast. I’ve never done a show in a better venue and everything Joy does is ‘top shelf.’”

One of Siegel’s concerns is coordinating the show around events in High Point, N.C., home of the High Point Market, one of the largest home furnishings trade shows in the US. As it happened, this edition of the MAA&GF overlapped with the Fall 2025 High Point Market and a couple of her usual vendors opted to be there instead. Kate Hornsby was able to participate in both events because her husband, Wayne, traveled to Aix la Chappelle from Columbia, S.C., to man her booth that combined art, objects and antiques. His favorite piece was a Federal sideboard that had an unusual hidden door on the side.

At the other end of the pavilion, Breck Armstrong, Moss Studios, brought industrial modern furniture and home accessories. He makes a line of hand-finished concrete pots and planters, as well as reproduces garden edging using wood molds. It was his first time at MAA&GF and he was pleased to be there.

Breck Armstrong with the cast-cement leaf-form birdbaths he makes. Moss Studios, Fowlerville, Mich.

The Commissary building housed House of Ancestors, LaPoma & LaPoma, Roberto Freitas, Rhoswens, Gore Dean, Potomac Collective and Beltway Bungalow. Freitas, who is one of Siegel’s long-time dealers and who had just been on the West Coast at the San Francisco Fall Show, reported a stellar show, noting he sold one of his most expensive paintings — Antonio Jacobsen’s “S.S. Newport” — soon after opening.

Gore Dean Antiques sells vintage and antique iron, garden and wicker, among other things. A French iron bread rack was one of several large and heavy pieces that were embellished with “sold” tags.

For the past three editions, David Evans, Bachelor Hill Antiques, has been the sole vendor in the Brewer’s Quarters. Situated just inside the front gate, he saw a lot of traffic and noted that “it’s a really fun building to work in…it was mobbed yesterday!” Among things we could see had sold were a pair of sporting paintings and a wing chair. A large bookcase displaying dogs in bronze, porcelain and paintings was attracting a lot of attention and we expected “sold” tags to appear there by the end of the show.

Hallowed Ground, Ellicott City, Md.

A small but choice selection of vendors are more garden focused and most were set up in the farm’s Foundry at the Emporium. Hallowed Ground Earthly Delights specializes in indoor and outdoor plants, plant accessories and botanical design services. According to Barb Melera’s website for Harvesting History, her company was founded “to provide its customers with the finest quality horticultural and agricultural products available today including seeds, roots, bulbs, tubers, plants, garden tools and equipment, garden clothing and garden-related books and art,” while collaborating “between experienced horticultural professionals and Page Seed, a 120 year old seed company located in Greene, N.Y.” Melera had packets of dozens of historical heirloom seeds and bulbs on display. Peony’s Envy (Bernardsville, N.J.), Cool Hollow Flower Farm (Washington County, Md.) and Pleasant Hills Farm (Darnestown, Md.). Rounding out the horticulture dealers was Twisted Roots Rare & Common Plants, which was set up in one of the freestanding greenhouses between the buildings.

The Spring Mid Atlantic Antique & Garden Festival will take place May 2-3. For information, www.midatlanticantiquesfestival.com.