“An Eye Toward Perfection,” the centerpiece loan show organized by the Shaker Museum and Library, set the tone for the 54th Winter Antiques Show, which opened at the Park Avenue Armory on Thursday evening, January 18, and continues with more receptions, tours and lectures through Sunday, January 27.
The Old Chatham, N.Y., institution gathered classic Shaker furniture and boxes in a rainbow array of colors, little-known textile treasures, spirit drawings and products the Believers made for sale to the World into its center floor display, cleverly designed by Stephen Saitas to recall the 1824 Meeting House in Mount Lebanon, N.Y.
Not surprisingly, the best of Shaker art and design turned up at Courcier & Wilkins, Elliott and Grace Snyder and David A. Schorsch & Eileen M. Smiles, among others.
Elliott and Grace Snyder, new exhibitors to the fair, featured a rare Enfield, N.H., octagonal-top Shaker chair-based worktable in bittersweet.
Schorsch & Smiles’ sale of an Ammi Phillips portrait marked $475,000 presaged brisk business in paintings, from American primitives to academic European canvases, around the floor.
But “perfection,” as demonstrated by 75 exhibitors from the United States and Europe, came in many sizes and shapes.
“We wanted to contrast with Shaker,” said Ralph Harvard, who created displays for Alexandria, Va., dealer Sumpter Priddy III and Philadelphia dealer Elle Shushan. For Priddy, who recently sold a suite of furniture owned by the Beverly family of Virginia, Harvard chose historic colors from the Beverly home, Blanfield Plantation. The bright olive, stone and chocolate backdrop made an arresting foil for Priddy’s offerings, which included two Virginia marble-top slab tables.
Harvard designed the booth of Shushan, a specialist in portrait miniatures, with a 1736 Bernard Lens III portrait of William Kent, the father of modern gardening, in mind. “We didn’t want the booth to look like the Adirondacks,” said Harvard, who re-envisioned Merlin’s Cave, a twiggy folly, sprayed gold, that Kent created for Queen Caroline. Harvard’s 13-year-old daughter, Holland, donned Eighteenth Century dress and full maquillage to become a living miniature in Shusan’s booth on opening night.
Perfection came in multiples at Donald Ellis Gallery, Ltd, and at James and Nancy Glazer Antiques.
“We have more Yup’ik dance masks than have been shown here at one time in a decade. We’ve been stashing them,” said Ellis, an Ontario dealer best known for Northwest Coast Indian art.
For Maine dealers James and Nancy Glazer, perfection was a slew of decorated and figural Pennsylvania pottery, some of it from the recent exhibition “Made In Pennsylvania: A Folk Art Tradition,” which closed in October at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.
For Catherine Sweeney Singer, “perfection” was record attendance on opening night.
“We are still counting tickets, but right now it looks like a record opening weekend, too,” she said. Because the Winter Antiques Show has perhaps the world’s lowest exhibitor turnover, the fair’s executive director freshens the event by tweaking the floor plan.
Jan Whitlock may have been the biggest beneficiary of the changes. The Malvern, Penn., dealer, who moved from a small corner booth to larger quarters on the far left aisle, all but sold out on opening weekend.
“I am far more visible and feeling it,” said Whitlock, a specialist in historic textiles, who, since selling her centerpiece room-sized hooked rug and calamanco quilt, has completely refreshed her stand.
Antiques and The Arts Weekly will bring you many more success stories along with a thorough review of the 54th Winter Antiques Show following the show’s close on January 27.
For information, 718-292-7392 or www.winterantiquesshow.com .
