For the 28th consecutive Thanksgiving weekend Bettianne Sweeney gathered a large group of her friends for the Holiday Antiques Show at the Kingsmill Marriott Hotel ballroom, November 27′9. Her friends are the exhibiting dealers and a great many of the shopping visitors to this charming weekend affair. Her children and now even adult grandchildren have made the show a part of the family holiday celebration, assisting her at the door and with some of the heavy work involved in running a two-day show.
Dealers come to the show for the pleasure of a working weekend in the city of the first Capitol, a chance to visit the museums and restored village just down the road, as well as the opportunity to sell their collections to an educated and appreciative audience. The show has become a destination for many area residents and also for many out-of-town visitors who spend the holiday weekend there, for Thanksgiving dinner and the show †a double header.
Sales were quite good, considering the state of the economy, according to several of the exhibiting dealers. Witt’s End Antiques, Wallkill, N.Y., was selling its inventory of early furniture in good quantity. A circa 1800 desk in mahogany, a painted chest of drawers, an early American Federal hunt board and, as owner Chris Doscher said, “a whole bunch of other pieces.” Doscher added, “This is a show I buy for all year, saving the pieces that seem to do the best in this market. It was good to have so much of that part of our collection sell.”
Carolyn Brown, Sparrows Nest Antiques in Norge, Va., was on a shopping trip the weekend before to find more inventory for the show. Her efforts were rewarded as some of the Staffordshire she purchased sold the first night to local collectors.
A couple from Wisconsin has been making Williamsburg their annual Thanksgiving destination. This show is a big part of their annual buying for their interior decorating businesses in Wisconsin and Florida. Their purchases included an oil on canvas from Easter Hill Antiques, Sharon, Conn., a table from Lawrence and DeLia and numerous other objects.
New to the show, Hazel Giles of Glenville, N.C., sold an early cherry corner cupboard with a Virginia Tidewater attribution to a gentleman from Norfolk. This customer arrived in the last hour Sunday and circulated through the show quickly looking at furniture. At 4:45, pm he and his college-age daughter negotiated the purchase of a banquet table and a desk for the daughter’s college apartment. With a few other items, they spent more than $20,000 in the last minutes of the show, creating smiles in many places.
Giles was also showing a step back hutch, one very large piece about 7 feet tall and 4 feet wide with an ornate but primitive split pediment top crown; in cherry and walnut and very good condition believed to be from North Carolina. Giles primarily deals in silver, jewelry, porcelain and decorative arts, which she also sold at this show.
Interviews during the show disclosed sales of many more large antiques with good value. Patricia Barger, Fairfield, Conn., was selling some furniture and fine art, but her big sale was a tall case clock.
South Egremont, Mass., dealer John Walther said he “sold several big case pieces, a very early chest of drawers, circa 1700, probably English, and also a New England pine jelly cupboard. This was pretty interesting for us because our business is primarily early lighting converted to electric.” Their shop, Red Barn Antiques in the center of that Berkshire village, has been a destination for lighting and light fixture parts for more than 40 years.
Mia Hudson Antiques, Franklin, Tenn., (but soon moving to South Carolina), sold several valuable paintings and a good variety of the small antique accessories, most of which she finds on shopping trips to England.
From Compton, R.I., Jim Lawrence and Dolores DeLia sold two tables, both very early New England and valuable. Their usual collection is fine earthenware from England, including early pearlware that had peafowl designs and other infill decorations.
Silver matching service is the backbone of Sue Robinette’s business, and she carries many trays filled with silver pieces in specific patterns for customers to select and build their own collection. In addition, Robinette carries many fine sterling hollowware pieces. From Monticello, Ky., she was among the newcomers to the show.
Fine early American art and unusually rare books and paper are the primary stock for Joyce and Bill Subjack, Neverbird Antiques, Surry, Va. For example, they were showing the wedding portraits of Mary Frances Clewes and Patrick S. Mallery from 1842.
A late Nineteenth Century handmade cotton batting wreath with Dresden flowers was among the first sales for Mad River Antiques from North Granby, Conn. Owners Steve and Lorraine German, were offering a display of stoneware of exceptional value to the most discerning collector.
Rose Medallion and Rose Mandarin dishes from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries were the most prominent collection as the customers entered the show. McNiel & Reed, Delmar, Md., have held the entry spot for many years, for their exhibit is always, according to Sweeney, “a strong statement that we have very good antiques here at this show.”
Across the aisle at the front door is Brill’s Antiques from nearby Newport News, Va. The exhibit was filled with early hardwood furniture, and the dealer sold a fine Eighteenth Century chest of drawers from it.
This year, two extra events were added to the show. Sweeney was able to get Janine Skerry, recently transferred from curator of ceramics to curator of metals at Colonial Williamsburg, and Suzanne Findlen Hood, associate curator of ceramics, to attend the show on Friday evening and sign their new book, Salt-glazed Stoneware in Early America . Sunday during the show there was an appraisal session with some of the exhibiting dealers offering oral appraisals for a $10 donation to Stand Up 2 Cancer, which is, as Sweeney described it, “a memorial to many connected to the show who have suffered with the disease.”
The show has been every Thanksgiving weekend for the past 28 years at the same hotel †even though it was once a Hilton and is now the Marriott Kingsmill. Expect to see it there again next year. For information, 757-220-1299 or www.holidayantiqueshows.com .
