Early risers on December 6 were treated to a landscape altered by a confectionary coating of fresh snow. And those with visions of finding that perfect gift were treated to a glittering array of antiques at the Wilton Holiday Antiques Show, opening the doors of the field house to early buyers at 9 am. Managed by Marilyn Gould, the one-day holiday gathering of nearly 100 dealers offered a wide variety of styles and specialties at virtually every price point.
Filled with beautiful things accessible to both beginning and seasoned collectors, the show presented select antique furniture, paintings, jewelry, decorative arts, Oriental rugs, porcelain and glass, rare books, prints, maps and more.
Newsom & Berdan Antiques, Thomasville, Penn., brought a display case full of the whimsical wooden folk art sculptures by Southern carver Frank Finney, a veritable menagerie of snakes, birds, dogs, horses, sitting hens and even an elephant. Along with this, the dealers Mike Newsom and Betty Berdan showcased a New England paint decorated blanket box with 15 full, half and quarter fans, circa 1790‱810. A whimsical sailor whirligig stood in a corner, paddles poised to spin, and there was a small early game board in salmon paint.
A booth filled chockablock with folky signs and objects advertised the presence of South Hadley, Mass., folk art specialist Victor Weinblatt. He offered a Jersey milk cow barn door trade sign from a New Jersey dairy farm, circa 1880, that had a great weathered surface, colors and graphics. From a summer cottage in Nova Scotia, circa 1920, came a sailboat whirligig whose original sails had survived, alongside a 1920s New England hooked rug with a naïve marauding bunny in a garden. Featuring great decorative fish, floral and cloverleaf shapes was a circa 1900 Adirondack birchbark basket.
New to the holiday show this year, Gurly 46 Antiques, Lancaster, Penn., commanded attention with quilts of dramatic impact, folk art and decoys. The star, literally, was a cotton star quilt, circa 1880s, from Lancaster County featuring the postage-stamp size pieces representative of the Bowmansville style. Vibrant, too, was a Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors quilt in cotton, circa 1880s, of pure rainbow colors and strong design. A collection of decoys included an oversize Amos Wallace, Smalls Point, Maine, example of a seagoing eider, 1910, and a root head heron from the Verity family, Long Island, N.Y., circa 1880s, its neck and head employing the suggestive shape found in a seaside root or branch.
DBR Antiques, Hadley, Mass., showed a compelling pair of early advertising signs, one for Peckham Wolf & Co. Lumber, white lettering on black, the other extolling “Window Blinds Made to Order by Curtiss,” with black lettering on white. Smalls included a mid-Nineteenth Century pair of pistachio green tin candle sconces with bold crimped top and a wall box in dark blue paint, as well as an exceptional cherry and maple document box with grain painted decoration, circa 1800.
A folky painting by Pamela Miles was attractively displayed at Kocian DePasqua Antiques, Woodbury, Conn. Filled with a glowing vitality, the winter scene was populated by skaters on a pond, villagers out for a carriage ride and opposing armies of young boys engaged in a snowball fight. A pair of cast stone dogs, circa 1900, stood sentry in the booth, along with two tall case clocks, one from Lebanon County, Penn., circa 1810, with a painted dial signed Gustavius Stoy and eight-day brass works. The clock’s walnut case had a swan’s neck pediment with carved sunflower rosettes.
Even though it is primarily known for antique firearms, jewelry and portrait miniatures, Red Griffin Antiques, Georgetown, Conn., put its emphasis on a pair of paintings. One, a genre scene by Edward Armfield, a noted painter of hunting and sporting subjects, was titled “Spaniels in a Game Room” and, framed, measured 20 by 25 inches. The other painting was an oil on canvas ship’s portrait of the side-wheeler Sagamore by Albert Szatmer Nemethy. Framed and measuring 15 by 25 inches, the painting was an accurate depiction of the side-wheeler that plied the New York⁃anada route on Lake George and was owned from 1831 to 1939 by the Delaware & Hudson Railroad system. Nemethy was a great maritime artist who fled from his native Hungary in 1950.
Baskets, stoneware, early lighting, folk art and American country furniture are some of the hallmarks of Axtell Antiques, Deposit, N.Y. For this show, the dealer brought a folky cats and ball hooked rug, circa 1880, an ash Woodlands Indian burl bowl from New York state, an Nineteenth Century blanket chest from Otsego Country, N.Y., and intriguing wrought iron stand for holding wine bottles, circa 1840, and a Classical Antiquities pattern platter, circa 1840.
Early hearth tools and lighting showcased at Pottles and Pannikins, Windsor, Conn., included a pewter whale oil lamp with a single “bull’s-eye” magnifying lens and double burner made by Roswell Gleason and of Massachusetts origin, late Eighteenth or early Nineteenth Century; a Nineteenth Century Peel wrought iron ram’s horn finial spade from Connecticut; and a circa 1780 dangle spit that was adjustable to maximize hearth cooking of a bird, extending from 16 to 28 inches. Produced by a whitesmith using white iron, the many scrolled hearth tool also featured twisted hooks. A sweet piece in the booth was a child’s push sleigh with metal covered wooden runners, original paint and original tufted material seat. The sleigh was made in the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Century.
No holiday show would be complete without the fetching collection of early and vintage Christmas ornaments and decorations assembled by Beverly Weir-Longacre. The Marlborough, N.H., dealer, who with her husband, Thomas Longacre, shares a booth at the show, always brings hundreds of hand-blown Christmas ornaments, feather trees and other holiday decorative items. In addition to her themed trees †patriotic, sheep, mushrooms, fruit, etc †this year she had a half dozen or so choice German ornaments from the 1900s‱930s. These included a small frosted rose, a large rose, a jester with great form and color, a sailboat and a snake icicle, so rare because not many have survived.
Across the Christmas line of demarcation, Thomas Longacre showcased a Nineteenth Century oil on canvas painting predating magazine illustration art and depicting a tavern entrance, its window with shadowy forms of patrons in revelry, a horse waiting patiently outside in the cold. An interesting advertising sign from the turn of the century used individual gothic script letters, gilded and each affixed to a screen backing, to spell out “Community Press.”
“Look Out for the Engine” warned another sign, this one displayed in the booth of J.B. Richardson, Westport, Conn. The railroad crossing sign was from the late Nineteenth Century. An early Twentieth Century store model with a period hand painted hosiery ad came with its original †”ancient” was how the dealer described them †working light bulbs. Probably used as an in-store display, the folk art brownstown featured a doll-size flower shop on the first floor, its wares visible through a picture window. Two parrot-form doorstops were also on view, the finer one a Bradley & Hubbard example.
Antique quilts specialist Stella Rubin, Darnestown, Md., returned to this show after an eight-year hiatus. Standout selections included a Bowmansville, Penn., monkey wrench pattern quilt with a lattice center, 80 by 80 inches, circa 1880s. Another top quilt was displayed near the show’s entrance †a Double T, York County, Penn., example from 1870 with paisleys and geometric block patterns in reds, whites and blues. A Man in the Moon doll quilt from the 1920s″0s and a humorous sign were additional highlights. The sign read: “Looking for a woman up to 5’4″ 130 lb., 65 to 80 yrs old for housekeeper and companion.”
The mood was more serious among the furniture gems and American folk paintings displayed by Peter Eaton and Joan Brownstein, Newbury, Mass. Eaton brought a Queen Ann high chest with graduated five-drawer top and base with shell carved center drawer and elaborate skirt centered by a pierced “cupid’s bow.” The chest’s graceful cabriole legs turned to crisply ridged knees and “hocked” ankles. The 71½-inch-high chest was probably from the Salem, Mass., area, circa 1770‸5.
Brownstein displayed both fine and folky oil and watercolor portraits, and also spotlighted a New England memorial, circa 1815, that was filled with symbolic impact †the single female figure in a white dress with ghostly white complexion, garland of roses in hand, leaning against an urn-topped plinth shadowed by a drooping blue willow tree.
Antiques and folk art assembled by West Chester, Penn., dealer Charles Wilson included an unusual US Peanut Roaster from Buffalo, N.Y., an excellent example of American country store advertising with its original lettering and original salmon paint. In the early 1880s, when this was made, an oil burner was placed in the bottom for roasting peanuts. It sported its original brass plaque on top indicating it had been patented July 25, 1882. A large copper cow weathervane found on a farmhouse in Hillsborough, N.H., dated to 1880 and featured a great weathered surface and several bullet holes. A bit fancier was a vane with horse and top-hatted gent, copper, molded and pieced, from New England, circa 1870, measuring 26 inches long.
More folk art gems, as well as some early American furniture and decorative accessories, could be found at Jewett & Berdan, New Castle, Maine, including a late Nineteenth Century Fraternal Order of the Orioles sign, hand painted canvas over wood, that had been found on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border and a blanket chest with drawer in original paint, circa 1840. The dealer showed a fantastic hooked rug with scalloped border, a homey composition featuring peacocks, flags and floral shapes that had been hooked onto burlap around 1860. Ella and Lucy are long gone, but around 1850, the girls must have been delighted to find a pair of children’s sleds, each with their name on it, under the tree.
An art offering in the form of an oil on canvas portrait of a circus worker by Donald Brown, circa 1944, was on view in the booth of Tom Brown. The McMurray, Penn., dealer also had a mahogany D-shaped card table with delicate inlay on tapered legs, circa 1790, and a pair of Hepplewhite shield back side chairs in mahogany with wonderful inlay work. An early Nineteenth Century walnut tall case clock by Christian Bixler, Easton, Penn., stood 7 feet 6 inches tall and was in original condition, save for the tips of its feet that had been repaired.
Salisbury, Conn., dealer Barbara Ardizone grabbed show patrons’ attention with a bold carousel horse head that had been carved in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century. In addition, a mid-Nineteenth Century folky hooked rug, primarily wool but with a small amount of cotton worked in, was on view, as was a make-do Chippendale mirror, circa 1830, on which mirror and frame had been applied to a single piece of maple and then painted red.
An iron weathervane of a poised-to-pounce squirrel, circa 1900, was featured in the booth of Lisa S. McAllister, Clear Spring, Md. The dealer also showed a set of four block prints by Frank Hartley Anderson (1890‱947) depicting colonial American and Civil War scenes, a high-style mahogany table, circa 1740‱820 from North Shore, Mass., or New York state and a trompe l’oeil oil on canvas of a pair of pipes, pouch, match boxes and a Philadelphia newspaper dated May 14, 1896. In a period wood frame, the work was signed and dated “F.E. Boone May 27 ’96,” measuring 17 by 10½ inches.
Art and Kathy Green, Newton Centre, Mass., specialize in early glass and ceramics. At the show, they featured two fine hand blown glass jugs by Thomas Caines, South Boston, circa 1830, and a set of English decorated salt glaze dishes and bowls from 1760.
The show was rounded out by the collection of Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century maps, botanical and natural history prints offered by Maile Allen, Colonia, N.J., including four first edition prints by S.A. Ogden, circa 1888. Titled “Uniforms of the Army of The United States,” the series showed such military subjects as cadets at West Point, the US Capitol and the Smithsonian.
For information, contact MCG Antiques Promotions, 203-834-9607 or email marilyn@mcgantiquespromotions.com .
