Grace Under Pressure: Winter Antiques Show Rises To The Occasion

New York City

:"I tell people, and I feel it strongly, that if you put money under your mattress, you won't sleep well. If you buy art, it will bring you joy and become more valuable," said Allan S. Chait.

The president of Ralph M. Chait Galleries, Inc, has exhibited at the Winter Antiques Show for 50 years, a record surpassed only by Kenneth Newman of The Old Print Shop, who has a year on Chait.

Over the decades, the expert in classical Chinese art has been a voice of reason, calm and integrity during some of the Winter Antiques Show's more tumultuous moments. Chait, who admits to having been born a day before that other great stock market crash, said, "I have seen economic times like these before. It's a rough experience for those who haven't been through it, but we'll survive."

The Winter Antiques Show, which previewed on Thursday, January 22, and continued through February 1 at the Park Avenue Armory, demonstrated this season, its 55th, why it is the reigning favorite among America's top antiques shows. Its skillful management and 75 seasoned exhibitors pulled out the stops to make 2009 one of the most glorious Winter Shows ever, polished in its presentation and, at a time when great merchandise is scarce, rich in objects of transcendent power and beauty.

Under the direction of show chairman Arie S. Kopelman and executive director Catherine Sweeney Singer, the Winter Antiques Show is subtly adapting to the changing market while maintaining its signature style.

Vignelli Associates, the high-profile Modernist design firm, installed the annual loan exhibition, this year glass from the Corning Museum. Fifty objects spanning two millennia glittered in a long glass case screened by a transparent scrim. Viewed from the entrance, the ghostly silhouette was both spare and contemporary.

The installation complemented the show's newly relaxed dateline, which now stops at 1969. The adjustment allowed for the addition of Antik, a Manhattan-based dealer in Scandinavian design that offered clean-looking wood and leather furniture by Swedish designer Axel Einar Hjorth against eye-popping floral walls.

Other new exhibitors included Nathan Liverant and Son and Hans P. Kraus Jr.

"We've had a very positive experience. We've sold some good things and met some interesting people," said Connecticut dealer Arthur Liverant, an important addition to a show that has often wanted for prime specimens of high-country New England furniture. Liverant's sales included a Winthrop Chandler overmantel painting, a pair of sculptural lions and a painting of a firefighter that had Greenwich Village associations.

Kraus, the show's first photography dealer, recreated Alfred Stieglitz's Gallery 291, complete with burlap walls, replicas of original lighting fixtures and works by Stieglitz, Steichen and others in their circle.

Treasures were scattered around the floor. Courcier & Wilkins produced a two-sided trade sign from the Sunrise Tavern in Hillsborough Center, N.H.

Associated Artists featured a Herter Brothers partners' desk from the Darius Ogden Mills house in California.

Appliqued with figures and accompanied by cap initialed "TF," for Tom Fool, a whimsical Nineteenth Century mummer's costume was snapped up by a museum at Cora Ginsburg, LLC.

In conjunction with Bard Graduate Center's display of English embroidery from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, needlework authority Carol Huber introduced Bard guests to American and English embroidery at the fair. Of the several showstoppers at Carol and Stephen Huber, one was a Warren, R.I., house sampler that years ago hung in the kitchen of Stonington, Conn., dealer Marguerite Riordan.

The new dateline allowed many traditionalists to expand their inventories, a nod both to younger buyers and current decorating trends, which favor eclecticism over period style.

"The future is all about collectors mixing early and later pieces," said Leigh Keno, who sold his Italian Modern Leonardo Cabinet, a spoon-shaped chest of drawers with heavy cast bronze pulls, to collectors of Eighteenth Century American furniture, Keno's specialty. The New York dealer also wrote up a 1956 Edward Wormley candlestand inset with iridescent Tiffany tiles and a painting by society portraitist Aaron Schikler, along with a circa 1790 Dunlap high chest, a William and Mary banister back chair and a 1760 New York musical tall case clock with German works by Friedrich Mollinger.

The new dateline allowed Joan Mirviss to bring Modern Japanese ceramics for the first time. The New York dealer featured works by pioneering clay artists Kawai Kanjiro, Hamada Shoji and Kitaoji Rosanjin. A 28-inch glazed stoneware bowl by Hamada Shoji, made in 1968 for display in Copenhagen, was $48,000.

Olde Hope Antiques' concession to modernity was a large wood relief sculpture of a spread eagle made in 1963 by Bernard Langlais, a Maine artist whose work was presented by the Portland Museum in 2002 and is included in, among others, the collection of Maine Antique Digest.

"It is going into a lodge," Olde Hope's Patrick Bell said of the eagle.

The 2009 show was notable for its bright, airy style, perhaps a response to the gloomy economic climate. Les Enluminures showed medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and twin cases of gold signet rings in a lime- and persimmon-colored stand whose colors seemed plucked from the brilliant palette of the illuminated works on paper on view.

A former textiles designer, Jan Whitlock evinces an irrepressible love of color and pattern. This year, Whitlock surrounded herself with luscious shrimp-colored painted plaster walls with ochre- and tomato-colored stenciled decoration, and represented half of a room by Moses Eaton (1753–1833) from a house in Deerfield, N.H..

"It's the best hooked rug I have ever owned," Whitlock said of her major sale, a hooked rug formerly in the collection of Marjorie Schorsch that was part of the 1977 Philadelphia Antiques Show loan show.

Massachusetts dealers Elliott and Grace Snyder used color and pattern to stunning effect in a booth mingling a rare stenciled bedcover, a New York State paint decorated blanket chest, primitive portraits and slip decorated redware.

More resembling fine art than folk art, large blue and white Dutch Delft plaques dazzled under strong light at Aronson of Amsterdam. The centerpiece of the themed display was a massive mythological plaque of circa 1688–1700 that represented two scenes from the story of Niobe. The plaque was looted by the Nazis in 1942 and later repatriated.

"I'm absolutely in a niche market. I sell garden ornaments in January. People don't collect it so much as use it as part of a greater scheme," said Barbara Israel, whose patrons include landscape architects and their customers. Thoughts of spring in mind, Israel's clients happily carted off a life-sized figure of Adonis, a stoneware urn, a composition stone bull mastiff, wrought iron lanterns and two figures of greyhounds.

Sharing the same week as the Presidential Inauguration, the Winter Show celebrated American history.

"Because of Obama and his interest in Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals , there has been enormous attention to Lincoln," said historical letters and documents dealer Kenneth Rendell, who showcased a signed Lincoln Civil War letter of 1862.

Adelson Gallery presented "George Washington" by John Trumbull; Sumpter Priddy retailed "Thomas Jefferson" attributed to Charles Peale Polk; and Giampietro included a carved portrait bust of American folk hero Daniel Webster, ex-collection of Barbara Johnson.

Portraiture, a strong suit, included an outstanding pair of likenesses by Charles Willson Peale, depicting Baltimore silversmith Christopher Hughes and his wife and child, at Schwarz Gallery; and Thomas Eakins's portrait of Major Manuel Waldteufel at Hirschl & Adler Galleries.

No portrait miniature was more compelling than a large, jewel-toned pair at Elle Shushan. The two paintings, family groups in watercolor and gouache on ivory, were painted in 1718 by Catherine Mendes da Costa (1679–1756), an English-born Jewish artist who was the daughter of Charles II's physician.

From the family of Rufus King, a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress, a pair of Paris porcelain vases decorated with portraits of Washington and Franklin ornamented the booth of Carswell Rush Berlin. Happy with his show, Berlin sold a Phyfe pier table and had serious interest in a dining table and set of chairs.

"Generally, people are holding onto their cash. I've brought very salable material, cut prices on old inventory, and come in with prices that are 30 percent lower on my new inventory," said Berlin.

"It's gone well," said Jim Glazer, a Maine-based folk art dealer who racked up sales of Pennsylvania pottery and bold, colorful, often eccentric furniture.

A sampling of other sales around the floor included, at Rupert Wace Ancient Art, a Late Dynastic Period Egyptian bronze cat and a Greek terracotta black figure amphora; Asher Brown Durand's "Summer Afternoon" at Alexander Gallery; a stamped Spooner & Athol Windsor settee at Frank & Barbara Pollack; a French two-tier lacquer chinoiserie table at Philip Colleck, Ltd; and a circa 1790 Chinese lacquer eight-fold screen at Malcolm Franklin, Inc.

Benefiting East Side House Settlement, the 2009 Winter Antiques Show will be remembered not for its banner sales, but as a moment when some of the art and antiques world's most talented players did their very best, with happy results.

For general information, www.winterantiquesshow.com or 718-665-5250.