“We gave it our best for the past eight years, but our dealer list became shorter, our gate smaller, and we have decided it is time to back away from Antiques in a Cow Pasture,” Frank Gaglio, show manager and owner of Barn Star Productions of Rhinebeck, N.Y., told Antiques and The Arts Weekly. This year’s flea market on Saturday, September 13, attracted just over 50 exhibitors and a small gate. “We had fewer than 15 people waiting to get into early buying,” Frank said, “and despite all we did we were unable to get attendance up to where it was feasible to continue the show.”
The show was staged in the field behind John Spencer Antiques, Route 44, formerly the home of Russell Carrell and site of the original flea market organized by him. Dealers once came from near and far to participate in the annual market in Salisbury, including exhibitors who were regulars in many of the top shows in the country such as The Winter Antiques Show, Ellis Memorial, The Philadelphia Antiques Show and the spring and fall shows in Hartford.
There was only a scattering of “brown” furniture at the show, mostly country items and accessories, with a limited number of folk art pieces. Prints and lithographs filled one large booth, Oriental rugs hung in another, and a large display of silver was brought by one dealer. But as one dealer prior to early buying said, “There is no excitement on the field, dealers are not roaming the field as they used to do, and not many sales are taking place.” Even the early buyers seemed in no rush to cover the ground in search of some treasure to take home.
“We are proud to have managed Antiques in a Cow Pasture, a benefit for Habitat for Humanity, and we are sorry to see it go,” Frank Gaglio said. But to look at it another way, “Pasture” has been retired and the new Autumn Hartford Antiques Show by Barn Star Productions is on the 2009 fall horizon.
