Joe Kindig III at 325 West Market Street, the site of Kindig Antiques since 1934.
:We thought we had read everything about antiques dealers until Joe Kindig III directed us, tongue in cheek, to
Antiques I Have Known, Corinne Griffith's thoroughly silly account of collecting in the 1950s. The Hollywood starlet became interested in antiques after her third husband, Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall, gave her a Confederate flag.
The nation's capital made a good base for subsequent antiquing trips to Pennsylvania, Maryland and the South. Griffith was bowled over by the dashing David Stockwell and by York, Penn., dealer Joe Kindig Jr, who reminded her of Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. Kindig Jr is said to have replied, "Who is Charlton Heston?"
More or less accurately, Griffith describes the Kindig shop, with its offhand grandeur and much remarked coating of dust, and its junior proprietor, Joe Kindig III, "a tall, slim, very aristocratic, intelligent looking young man with reddish blond hair." At 84, Kindig is no longer young nor his hair blond. He is well-spoken and insightful with a wry sense of humor and an understated manner that can be intimidating.
Kindig III loves beautiful things, especially Eighteenth Century Pennsylvania architecture and furniture, and believes that Newport design was not a patch on that of Philadelphia. His tastes and interests are nevertheless broad. His favorite York lunch spot is Weiner World Restaurant, where "the usual" is two Texas dogs piled with chili and an inch of diced, raw onion.
"We've bought a few killer pieces from the Kindigs,” confirms Jonathan Prown, director of Chipstone Foundation. This circa 1755 Philadelphia high chest of drawers has carving attributed to the Garvan carver.
In recognition of his contributions to the field, the Antiques Dealers Association of America (ADA) is honoring Joseph K. Kindig III with the 2008 ADA Award of Merit, to be presented at a dinner in his honor on Saturday, April 12, in conjunction with the Philadelphia Antiques Show at the Navy Yard. Speakers will include his friend and fellow dealer Peter Tillou, and Thomas Hills Cook, director of Wright's Ferry Mansion in Columbia, Penn., and chairman of The von Hess Foundation. Mechanicsville, Penn., dealer Christopher T. Rebollo is master of ceremonies.
"The Kindigs are a Pennsylvania institution," says Rebollo, who first met Joe in 1990 when Rebollo worked for the late Philip Bradley Sr in Downingtown, Penn. "Joe came in occasionally and I was awestruck. He was brilliant, amusing and unbelievably humble. I have rarely been more honored than when the Kindigs drove from York in 1998 for the opening of my first shop."
Of Swiss German descent, the Kindigs settled in York County around 1710. They became prosperous farmers — the old homestead included 400 acres of well-improved land when Eli Kindig died in 1877 — and built a regional enterprise selling horses and mules. The automobile could have put them out of business, but Joe Kindig Jr (1898–1971), a trader by instinct and pedigree, filled the family's stables with four-drawer chests and blanket boxes instead.
A maternal aunt encouraged Kindig Jr's interest in antiques by taking him to house sales. By the mid-1910s, the adolescent was selling rare old guns, pistols, swords and powder horns by mail. His 304 West Market Street shop in York debuted in The Magazine Antiques' "Collectors' Guide" in November 1925. Kindig, with two other York dealers, took his first display advertisement in the publication in May 1926, urging readers to visit "Historic Old York" while attending the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition. By 1927, Kindig proclaimed "one of the largest stocks of genuine antiques of the better kind in the state of Pennsylvania."
