Brandywine Museum's 34th Annual Memorial Weekend Antiques Show

It is not too often that the site of a very highly regarded antiques show has permanent exhibits that rival the merchandise brought to the site for the show. The Brandywine River Museum in Chadd's Ford, Penn., is a rarity, housing one of the largest and most frequently visited exhibits of American artist Andrew Wyeth along with other permanent and changing exhibits. In its 34th year, the show was held, as always, on the Memorial Day holiday weekend, May 27-30, with 32 exhibiting dealers scattered about the rustic building and its stalls on the courtyard in this suburb to both Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del.

Brandywine Creek, as it is also known, was the site of DuPont's gunpowder factories circa 1800 when E.I. DuPont built his first gunpowder factory several miles down stream in Wilmington. This early commerce contributed to the area's economy and the site was originally a gristmill, circa 1840, Hoffman's Mill, operating as a mill and lumberyard until the 1960s. At that time - with the support and endowments of several prominent local individuals - the Brandywine River Museum was created.

Open daily except Christmas, there are permanent galleries devoted to Andrew Wyeth and his father, N.C. Wyeth. According to Jim Duff, executive director of the museum, the museum's collection of the Wyeths' works is so vast the exhibits are rotated affording visitors different views of their works. Other exhibits are of American folk art and artists including Andrew's son Jamie and other family members.

The antiques show, managed for more than 20 years by Robert Armacost of Armacost Antiques Shows, assembled dealers with stock in antiques from Colonial America, Georgian England and times forward offering excellent quality with provenance or attributions to the individual items. Mr Armacost said, "The antiques offered a wide variety of taste and style for our customers who come here year after year. The dealers are chosen for what they carry as the highest quality." Although selling to a local or regional market, this show has a reputation among dealers as one to be seen in, for the quality of the antiques and for who comes to see and perhaps be seen as well.

Offerings at the show included a collection of weathervanes from Norma Chick, Autumn Pond Antiques, Woodbury, Conn. She also exhibited a lawn ornament of an elfin boy in hammered copper, about life-size, called "Pan" and priced at $6,200. Mrs Chick also trades in porcelain with a large collection available.

Another Connecticut dealer, Hanes and Rushkin of Old Lyme, was showing a collection of late Eighteenth Century furniture along with a period oil on canvas of a gentleman. Nearby Carol Trela, Trela Antiques of Baldwin, Md., offered a Philadelphia Sheraton-style chest of drawers, circa1795 priced at $2,900, which found a new home during the show.

Hooked rugs have seen activity in many shows recently and here there were several prominently displayed. On display as wall hangings, there were several in excellent condition including a black background with a pattern described by an onlooker as a splash, where it might be the picture of what happens when something was dropped into the water. Another was of multicolored chickens.

There was one exhibit of Oriental rugs from Lawrence Forlano, Franconia, N.H. He and his wife Barbara have been offering fine Persian rugs for about 40 years first through his shop in New York City and later in York, Maine, and for more than 20 years exclusively at shows. His collection is always composed of rugs of very fine quality, condition and interesting attribution such as a tribal rug runner hung on his booth's wall at this show, priced at $2,200.

Furniture was the focus of several dealers at the show. To the Point, Richmond, Va., was filled with hardwood furniture both English and American from about 1800. Irvin and Dolores Boyd Antiques from nearby Fort Washington, Penn., had both the formal hardwood and also a pine settle bench nearly 6 feet wide, also circa 1800.

Jerry and Judy Brill, Newport News, Va., offered more English furniture, primarily Georgian from the Eighteenth Century. Norwich, Ohio, dealer Kemble was offering a more primitive style American furniture including a cherry Pennsylvania Dutch cupboard, approximately 5 feet wide and nearly 7 feet tall from the late Eighteenth century, for $38,000. Roger Winter is an English transplant who had among the pieces in his collection a Gainsborough Chippendale chair in red upholstery for $5,800.

Don Heller, Heller-Washam of Portland, Maine, "had a good show. I sold a period Chippendale mirror, a Philadelphia school portrait of a Massachusetts whaling ship captain and a good blanket chest with bracket feet." He had featured several other pieces, which included a Queen Anne lowboy and a Chippendale chest, both of which attracted a lot of interest.

The show uses the courtyard with a long shed, open to the courtyard, for about a half dozen of the dealers. John Long, Mineral, Va., liked his space there as it was large enough to spread out while still protected from the weather. His exhibit included a fireplace mantel from Buncombe County, N.C., which he sold, and a small hutch in pine also from North Carolina priced at $6,400. Others in the courtyard included Charley Horse Antiques, Ruther Glen, Virginia, and The Barringers from Stockton, N.J.

This event has been for all 34 years a great source of high grade antiques for the public and also a good fundraiser for the museum's Volunteers' Art Acquisition Fund. According to their program it "has enabled the museum to purchase over 200 works of art, broadening the museum's collection and its ability to preserve and exhibit exceptional works of art."

While this show held only once a year, and always on Memorial Day Weekend, Mr. Armacost assembles most of these dealers for several of his other shows. Next on his calendar is Chevy Chase (Md.) Women's Club, September 9-11 followed by Cincinnati, Ohio, October 14-16. For more information on these shows, 410-435-2292 or www.armacostantiquesshows.com.