A Southern Antiques Supermarket

ATLANTA, GA.

:At Scott Antiques Market, Atlanta Expo Center, January 6-9, customers of all kinds converged on 2,400 booths filled with antiques from 1,500 dealers. Thursday morning began with the scheduled dealer deliveries of show items, during which customers waited at the rear of the vehicles to be emptied to see what special bargains they could acquire. Show manager Bobbie Powers said the response "has been phenomenal. We cannot provide an accurate count of customers during the deliveries but from regarding the space in the parking lot we know that crowds have been increasing."

When the show officially opened, the early activity was intense with sales in every corner of the two buildings. Tom Wester, an ex-New Yorker now living in nearby Marietta, is an avid collector and dealer of signed Tiffany lamps. On the first day he sold several pieces but there were still some remarkable items left, including a Stalactite hanging fixture, circa 1897 priced at $75,000, and an 18-inch peony table lamp, circa 1900, for $125,000.

Caren Monetta, a local dealer from Alpharetta, specializes in majolica - colorful pottery from the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries often made in the form of sea life and plants. Her booth consisted of tables with steplike shelves displaying hundreds of pieces of majolica. The dealer with the oldest antiques at the show was Rick Anding's Museum House, Fayetteville Ga., with pottery from ancient Rome, 100 BC, as well as petrified and fossilized flora and fauna. His supply is so extensive that Etruscan and Byzantine oil lamps are priced at under $100 in good condition.

Furniture, however, is the mainstay for the market, but there is no one style or period that dominates this monthly collection. Catherine McDonald and Jim Ray bring rustic furniture from their Misty Mountain Gifts shop in Blue Ridge, Ga. Tom Nagy, a Connecticut resident, makes the trip nearly every month with pre-Civil War furniture and accessories, such as an upholstered Philadelphia chair with marquetry inlays and ball and claw feet, circa1840, priced at $1,500.

Brian Wilson sold several pieces of early American and country furniture, such as a cherry Sheraton chest of drawers, with rope-turned columns and original feet, circa 1825 Ohio. Red Montgomery, Florida, and Danny Price, South Carolina, both have booths filled with American furniture found in circa 1800 homes. Don Schweikert, Ohio, brought early primitive furniture, mostly painted.

Yet, there was a lot more than furniture. Dennis and Dad of Fitzwilliam N.H., exhibited English porcelain dishes. The Keefers' Flo Blue Shop, Birmingham, Miss., and Anne Charles Antiques, Marietta, Ga., had a wide array of early porcelain, china and pottery, and art was the focus of Tony Gould and Peter Spanos' booth. There were also vintage garments and fur coats, silver and jewelry in other booths.

Look for the Scott Antiques Market on the second weekend of each month, but it really begins the Thursday morning before Saturday, in the parking lot.

The next scheduled date is February 11-14, at the Atlanta Expo Center, 3650 Jonesboro Road, and while most dealers repeat month after month the inventory does change. For information 740-569-4112 or www.scottantiquemarket.com.