The Greenwich Civic Center may not have the ambience of a sumptuous hotel ballroom, but a fine display of architecturals and wrought iron at the center’s entrance put together by Bob Withington, York, Maine, set an elegant tone from the get-go for the Greenwich Kiwanis Fall Antiques Show October 17‱8.
The show has been an institution in Greenwich since the 1970s and during the years has gone through several promoters. Managed by B&D Johnson Antiques since 2002, the show features a diverse assortment of merchandise and dealers offering both high-end and competitively priced items to attract buyers at all levels.
Kocian DePasqua Antiques, Woodbury, Conn., offered an Eighteenth Century English Georgian burl walnut chest of drawers that had wonderful herringbone banded inlay, while John Saradjian, Stamford, Conn., showed a Perepedil Caucasian prayer rug and a fetching pair of still lifes of fruit by a Dutch painter.
Margaret Doyle, Cumberland Foreside, Maine, set up two attractive booths, across the aisle from each other in the main gym. Highlights ranged the gamut from an Eighteenth Century wine tasting table to a green open wire ball about 3 feet high. “We like Eighteenth Century but we like everything else too,” said Brian Doyle.
“This really sets the tone for what the Greenwich show is all about,” Bruce Johnson of B&D Johnson Antiques, the show’s manager, as he strolled the show Saturday morning pre-opening, stopping to admire Doyle’s booth. “It’s a fun show to do.”
Just down the aisle, Roberto Freitas American Antiques, Stonington, Conn., offered a pair of reclining dog statues on a stand offering a silent welcome into his booth. In an elegantly symmetrical booth, Freitas placed a weathervane in each corner and a tall case clock in the center of the back wall flanked by a pair of large maritime paintings and two smaller framed pairs of ships.
Ackerson’s Homestead Antiques, Park Ridge, N.J., offered a Nineteenth Century oak tavern table with fluted and slightly splayed legs, dated 1801; a Nineteenth Century bowl retaining traces of old red paint; and a Boston silk on linen needlework wrought by Martha Willard Merritt that featured the alphabet above trees and potted flowers.
Dana Tillou Fine Arts, Buffalo, N.Y., liberally sprinkled choice paintings all around its booth, complemented by a few pieces of fine furniture. Standouts included a New England mahogany game table with a rare inlaid eagle on the central panel and British painter Lionel Cowen’s oil on panel portrait, “The Embroidered Coat,” showing a lovely young woman wearing an even more stunning coat. The piece de resistance in the booth, however, had to be a wonderful English School painting showing about 50 people in a country tavern setting, circa 1845.
Highlights at Colony Shop Antiques & Art, Fayetteville, N.Y., included a table with elephant-form supports complete with ivory tusks, circa 1860, and two tall oil on board paintings harkening to the Golden Age of children’s illustration. Bradley Walker Tomlin’s “Mary Quite Contrary,” 1921, which measured some 60 by 30 inches, hung next to Julian Barratt Mansfield’s “Little Miss Muffet,” 1921, also 60 by 30 inches.
Bob Withington, York, Maine, showed an Italian Eighteenth Century console with Twentieth Century decoration of flora and exotic birds, a pair of marble pedestal tables with glass tops and a pair of cast iron tables with stone tops, as well as a bronze sundial on a marble base, circa 1910. A set of five large grey- or black-veined marble balls in varying shades from light to dark, circa 1900, offered inspiration for garden decoration, while, for the interior, a mirrored dressing table from the 1940s was attracting interest.
Douglas Hare Antiques, Palmyra, N.Y., and Hare’s Ltd, Palmyra, N.Y., are the businesses of this husband and wife team of dealers. They offered a few pieces of fine furniture, as well as several gems among smalls, including a rare Mount Washington amberina decanter, circa 1885; a signed and rare Moser cologne bottle; and a rare two-piece Sandwich Glass onion lamp/match holder.
Susan Barr, Trumbull, Conn., scours out rare English metal, such as the panel in the “ceiling rose” pattern she had polished to a high sheen and fit into a stand to make a fetching table. “That’s the most fun I have,” she said of finding pieces that seem to have no use and repurposing them into a functional and decorative item.
Other highlights in her booth included an English trophy biscuit barrel, circa 1900; a European yacht model, circa 1900′0; and a Victorian oak kneehole desk with mahogany-lined drawers, circa 1860.
Marianne Stikas, Kent, Conn., and Pillar’s Antiques, Gray, Maine, shared a booth, offering leather club chairs, Chinese Export gems and an eye-catching and oversized, carved Nineteenth Century Italian chinoiserie fragment, probably from a larger frame, in a grapevine motif, that was displayed on the booth wall.
Standouts among the fine barometers on display at Barometer Fair, Sarasota, Fla., included an 1860 high Victorian carved oak barometer with a rare 12-inch dial (most have 8-inch dials) and a solid mahogany marine stick barometer in its original mount. The dealer also had an early typewriter dating to 1881.
S. Eden Antiques, Commack, N.Y., filled its tabletop display cases with jewelry and interesting smalls, such as silver salt and peppers in the form of a Dutch boy and girl, a vintage hair comb with marcasite and a late 1800s sterling silver case on a chain with leather inserts.
Robert T. Foley, Gray, Maine, showed a late Eighteenth Century or early Nineteenth Century bowl in a great finish, 29½ inches diameter, while Pierce-Archer II Antiques, Nesconset, N.Y., offered an English mahogany bowfront chest, circa 1920.
Rounding out the offerings were an English cast iron bust of Lord Byron from the Eighteenth Century at Black Swan Antiques, Washington, Conn.; an English mahogany sideboard with the original ice drawers at Gary Bardsley Antiques, Sudbury, Mass., and an Edwardian scorpion pin in gold and with a multitude of gemstones.
For more information, www.bdjohnsonantiques.com or 845-868-7464.
