Country Treasures Abound At Guilford Antiques Show

Guilford, Conn.

:The Guilford Antiques Show is a classic. It was founded nearly 40 years ago to raise funds for Hyland House, a circa 1700 house museum that is itself a compelling artifact of the Colonial Revival. The Guilford Antiques Show was updated this year by Barn Star Productions, whose effort won the full support of the local community.

Slated for demolition in 1916, Hyland House was saved by the genteel ladies of the Dorothy Whitfield Historic Society. The Dorothies, as they were called, borrowed money from former Connecticut governor Rollin S. Woodruff, a Guilford resident, to buy the house. The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, now Historic New England, repaid the debt.

The Dorothies turned to Norman Isham (1864–1963), an architect and historian who wrote Early Connecticut Houses (1900), to restore Hyland House. In his long career, Isham also restored Trinity Church and Redwood Library in Newport and contributed to the Colonial rooms at the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Hyland House opened to the public in 1918 as a museum of Colonial life and architecture. Killingworth, Conn., dealer Lewis Scranton, a longtime Guilford Antiques Show exhibitor, served as the society's first male president.

Barn Star Productions' chief Frank Gaglio nearly doubled the size of the show, at the Elisabeth Adams School just off I-95, on April 19 and 20. Taking his cue from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century contents of Hyland House, Gaglio emphasized the fair's traditional flavor, adding exhibitors who are well-known from the Connecticut Antiques Show, Mid*Week in Manchester and other leading events.

Gaglio also tried to keep costs under control.

"Another way to rebuild a show is to allow it to be profitable for dealers. We kept booth rent at $5 a square foot, which is virtually unheard of for a show with Stacy walls, and supplied 500 watt electricity," said Gaglio, who was barraged with calls from dealers wanting to get into the "New Guilford Antiques Show," as it was advertised.

Clockmaker Ebenezer Parmelee, grandson of the original owner and maker of the 1727 steeple clock on Guildford green, was Hyland House's most famous occupant, so it was natural to find clock specialist Kirtland Crump, based in nearby Madison, Conn., on hand with a wide selection of timepieces, from tall cases to steeple, banjo, mantel and regulator clocks.

Local antiques dealer Edwin C. Ahlberg, whose shop is on the Post Road in Guilford, paired prints from McKenney and Hall's North American Indian series with formal American furniture, including a Sheraton mahogany chest of drawers and a Massachusetts Queen Anne maple highboy.

John and Jan Maggs, whose expansive Conway, Mass., farmhouse and barn is the perfect setting for early New England furniture, paintings, rugs and smalls, worked on a smaller scale at Guilford, building their booth around a North Shore, Mass., William and Mary veneered high chest of drawers.

Woodstock, Conn., dealer Erik S. Wohl paired a paint decorated New England blanket chest with Queen Anne side chairs and a New England drop leaf table with a vivid tiger grain.

Richard Fuller of Hand Picked Antiques made the most of his stand, dividing it in two with mid-Eighteenth Century interior architectural paneling that had red wash on one side and later vinegar decoration on the other.

Extending the dateline for furniture was Drake Field Antiques of Longmeadow, Mass., with a Federal worktable and classical side chairs.

Steve German of Mad River Antiques, North Granby, Conn., showed a selection of blanket chests and boxes with stoneware and ship's portraits. A four-gallon jar decorated in cobalt with a turkey was $1,750.

Choice folk art was the order of the day for Michael and Monique Rouillard of Quiet Corner Antiques. The Sterling, Conn., dealers included a two-sided game board, a lion in a cage pull toy, a turned and painted barber pole, a Harris & Co., running horse weathervane, and Pennsylvania and New England redware in luscious glazes.

Lorraine German's flair with textiles was evident in a vignette composed of toile bed and window treatments, stuffed animal toys, pillows and a hooked mat that she conserved and mounted on a stretcher.

A handful of desirable samplers included, at Hannauer & Seidman of Colchester, Conn., an 1819 Philadelphia house sampler, $3,995, by Anne Fergusson. Henry T. Callan featured an 1848 Connecticut sampler by Mary Thurston and a colorful 1854 Ohio house sampler by Elisabeth Ferguson.

Many exhibitors acknowledged Guilford's coastal setting by bringing marine art and antiques or suggesting beach house decor and palettes. Cape Cod dealer Priscilla Hutchinson arrayed blue and white spongeware in a booth rich in painted furniture and folk art, including a Cape Cod shorebird decoy and a Nantucket basket signed "Fred S. Chadwick, 42 Pine Street."

More pottery was on hand at Charles and Barbara Adams, Cape Cod dealers who featured choice poodles and book flasks in their extensive display of Bennington wares.

The Dorothy Whitfield Historic Society sold emblems of spring — daffodils, primroses and boughs of pussy willows — at a Flower Market at the show's entrance. Several exhibitors supported the effort by bringing garden antiques. Ellington, Conn., dealers Paul and Karen Wendhiser featured iron furniture and planters. Gardenalia of Falls Village, Conn., offered urns, statuary, outdoor furniture and watering cans.

Guilford was awash in sunshine and spring blooms on Saturday morning, usually a bad omen for attendance. But nearly 1,100 shoppers visited during the weekend, an excellent gate.

"We all came away uplifted," Gaglio said after the fair's close.

Barn Star Productions is planning two new shows in Pennsylvania for 2009. Antiques and The Arts Weekly will bring you the details as they are confirmed.

Hyland House is open every day but Monday from June through Labor Day. For information, www.hylandhouse.com . For show information, 845-876-0616 or www.barnstar.com .