: The Connoisseur's Antiques Fair is the only show in New York, or
practically anywhere for that matter, where a dazzled shopper can
pick among Egyptian sculpture, Renaissance reliquaries, Old
Master paintings, Ming and Biedermeier furniture, and tapestries
ranging from medieval to midcentury modern.
The unusual depth and range of the show, which wrapped up at the
69th Regiment Armory at 26th Street just before the start of the
Thanksgiving holiday weekend, owes much to the fair's origins.
Though only three years old, the event was conceived by the Art
and Antique Dealers League of America, at 80 the nation's oldest
continuing association of antiques dealers.
Several of the fair's 53 exhibitors - including Philip Suval,
Inc, and Blumka Galleries - have been in business so long that
they could have participated in a league show, had there been
one, when the group was founded in 1926.
Nearly a dozen other exhibitors - Dillingham & Company,
L'Antiquaire & The Connoisseur, Geoffrey Diner, E&J
Frankel, Hyde Park, Kentshire Galleries and Clinton Howell among
them - are or have been prominently associated with the Winter
Antiques Show or the International Fine Art and Antique Dealers
Show. With patience and fortitude, the Connoisseur's Antiques
Fair may one day join the ranks of these banner shows, which have
65 years of experience between them.
"We've proved the myth wrong that you can't have an upscale
antiques show downtown. Our major sales were to buyers from the
Upper East Side, the Upper West Side and out-of-town," show
manager Bill Caskey said afterward.
"We're still trying to get a date uptown, but it has to be the
right date," said the Topanga, Calif., organizer. Caskey and his
wife, Liz Lees, have passed on Thanksgiving weekend, the last
weekend of December and the first weekend of January as possible
dates for an uptown event.
There were two changes to this year's Connoisseur's Antiques
Fair. The Morgan Library replaced St Vincent's Hospital as the
beneficiary of the opening night preview party on Thursday,
November 18. The show also started a day later, continuing
through Monday, November 22. The Monday hours got mixed reviews
from exhibitors.
"The Morgan Library is a good charity with the right people.
There was a real buzz on the floor until people were whisked away
for dinner at 7:30 pm. I'd like to see dinner be an hour later,"
said Caskey.
Though slightly down from a year ago, attendance was up by nearly
20 percent from the fair's 2002 debut, lifted by increased
traffic through the weekend. A party for interior designers on
Wednesday, November 17, was particularly successful. Celebrity
decorators like Mario Buatta canvassed the floor with cell phones
pressed to their ears, getting approval from clients before
committing on purchases.
"The show is evolving. It's more varied and interesting than
ever," said George Subkoff, the Westport, Conn., dealer who has
been the show's chairman since its inception.
"We're family. League members are devoted to making this a great
event," said league president Tony Blumka. "It gets better every
year."
Blumka Galleries, which counts the European Fine Arts Fair in
Maastricht, The Netherlands, among its most important annual
engagements, accented its jewel-toned stand with a Fourteenth
Century French carved sandstone Madonna and Child on a
reticulated throne. The dealers also featured a rare collection
of 13 polychromed wood figures representing Christ and the 12
Apostles. The Nuremberg sculptures dated to circa 1420-40.
"They were meant to be under an altar. When we bought them they
were covered in white paint, which a conservator spent six months
removing," said Blumka.
A well-balanced show with depth in more formal English,
Continental and Asian specialties, the display was one of visual
contrasts and harmonies. Vallin Galleries, the Wilton, Conn.,
dealer in Chinese art, accented its ensemble with a Seventeenth
Century Chinese root chair. Just across the aisle, George Subkoff
offered an Austrian burl-walnut serpentine table, $28,000, with
the same animated spirit. Subkoff paired the table with a
fanciful Venetian grotto armchair, $12,000, and pair of whimsical
Meiji candlesticks, $14,000, fashioned as climbing monkeys.
"The root chair is a wonderful expression of the Chinese unity
with nature, an idea that grows out of Daoism, the first native
Chinese religion," said dealer Peter Rosenberg. The root chair
was matched with a supremely understated Ming horseshoe chair, a
pair of Japanese screens depicting scenes from The Tale of Genji
and a pair of exceptional Kangxi period famille verte vases.
For decades Vallin Galleries has charmingly occupied a quaint
farmhouse by a stream in Wilton. Despite a winter clearance sale
last year, the gallery has no plans to move, Rosenberg said.
Caskey-Lees also tapped Arts of Pacific Asia Fair regular Jon
Eric Riis for the show. The Atlanta dealer in Asian textiles and
costumes made a splash with Chinese silk robes, including an
embroidered yellow silk imperial example dating to the first half
of the Nineteenth Century.
Flying Cranes Antiques, New York City.
Chinese art and artifacts dealers Edith and Joel Frankel of
New York created two large rooms, one for sculpture, the other for
porcelain. Holiday gift-givers were tempted by a case of Chinese
jewelry, most of it jade. Another case held selections from
Frankel's recent exhibition, "Play It Again: Asian Games and
Pastimes," featuring Asian puzzles, chess, backgammon and other
diversions. The Frankel gallery coincided with "Asian Games: The
Art of The Contest" at New York's Asia Society through January 16.
The Frankels fully illustrated color catalog on Asian games
includes a half-dozen essays. One, on Chinese nuptial games, is by
sexologist Dr Ruth Westheimer.
Japanese and Korean art expert Carole Davenport designed her
striking stand around a Japanese screen assembled from Korean
sutra sections, circa 1800. Her many sculptures included a
charming Korean donor figure holding a cat. The carved and
painted sculpture dated to the Nineteenth Century.
Orientations Gallery and Flying Cranes Antiques, both of New
York, promised top drawer Meiji art. At Flying Cranes, a
parcel-gilt bronze Suikoden, or heroic Samurai warrior, was a
standout.
Chinese porcelains greeted visitors at Imperial Oriental Art,
where dealer Mostafa G. Hassan showcased an important Kangxi blue
and white five-piece garniture of Dutch provenance and a large
pair of famille rose pink bowls on imperial stands. The bowls,
with Daoguang seal marks, were purchased by a French-Canadian
diplomat in the late Nineteenth Century.
Virginia dealers John and Barbara Suval and New York dealers
Sanford and Ada Suchow provided plenty of Chinese Export
porcelain. Suchow & Seigel also delighted customers with a
case of objets d'vertu such as French snuff boxes, Chinese card
cases and captivating German Stobwasser boxes.
English and Continental furniture was another strong suit. At
Charlecote of Kansas City, a red lacquered English drop front
bureau of circa 1725 stood in lively contrast to a pair of
shapely Regency hall chairs, $45,000. The gleaming mahogany seats
inset with the crest of the Watson Taylors probably came from one
of the two family homes, Erlestore House in Wiltshire or Lyssone
Hall in Jamaica. Charlecote reportedly had its best show ever,
selling $95,000 worth of objects on preview night alone, plus
another $185,000 to a Washington, D.C., client.
England's rustic arts were represented by Winsor Antiques of
Woodbury, Conn. "The Ballad Singers," a charming Napoleonic
period folk portrait by an anonymous British artist, circa 1820,
took a place of pride on Winsor's back wall.
Vermont dealers Lisa Freeman and John Fiske are the go-to source
in this country for English oak. They are single-handedly
encouraging the revival of this quaintly romantic furniture from
the Seventeenth Century with their new book, Living with Early
Oak.
"We had a very, very good show," said Lisa Freeman, who, with her
husband, sold seven pieces of furniture - including a late
Elizabethan long table, $18,000, and a circa 1625 press cupboard,
$20,000 - before moving on to the Peabody Essex Antiques Show in
Salem, Mass., Thanksgiving Weekend. In New York, Fiske and
Freeman wrote slips for sales to customers from Mexico and
Colorado, proving that show advertising is reaching a
geographically diverse audience.
A guide to Italian furniture is also hot off the press. Written
by Helen Costantino Fioratti of L'Antiquaire & The
Connoisseur, Il Mobile Italaniano was published in
Florence earlier this year.
"I did all the illustrations myself," said the talented dealer of
the book that combines colors plates with line drawings.
L'Antiquaire & The Connoisseur's colorful display featured
paint decorated French and Italian furniture, a Milanese
intarsia-work games table and a Parma secretary of mellow
fruitwood.
Iliad Antik of New York devoted its stand to a suite of
Biedermeier furniture upholstered in a crisp black and tan
stripe. Its walnut veneered sofa with extravagantly scrolled
front legs was made in Vienna between 1825 and 1835.
A handful of Americanists provided an understated alternative to
high-style European wares. Vermont dealer Judd Gregory anchored
his booth with a flattop highboy from Essex, Mass.; a Connecticut
chest-on-chest; a Salem, Mass., bonnet-top highboy; and two New
England chest of drawers, both probably from Massachusetts.
Maine dealers William and Arlene Schwind mingled country and
Classical items. Their piece de resistance was an early
Nineteenth Century mahogany banquet table and eight Federal
shield back chairs.
Across the aisle, The Federalist Antiques featured a sumptuous
breakfront bookcase and an ingenious reclining chair.
"We brought mostly Eskimo and Northwest Coast artifacts along
with some pre-Columbian material," explained Jeffrey Myers of
Myers & Duncan. Of note was a Tlingit ceremonial bowl of
circa 1820-40. Deaccessioned from the Heye Foundation of the
American Indian in the 1940s, the effigy vessel was carved with a
beaver with inset Russian trade beads for eyes. On the vessel's
other side was a carving of a raven.
Joan Barist, the other primitive art expert on the floor, mounted
a dramatic display of African masks, including a carved and
painted Kifwebe mask, $18,000, from Congo, formerly in a Belgian
collection.
Vojtech Blau has specialized in Sixteenth through Eighteenth
Century European tapestries for the past four decades. The New
York dealer mounted a Seventeenth Century Flemish pictorial
weaving of a farmyard scene next to "La Nuit et Les Insectes," a
circa 1950 Aubusson designed by the modernist Jean Lurcat.
The Connoisseur's Antiques Fair boasted a dealer in Old Master
drawings and another in Old Master paintings. Both unveiled new
discoveries.
"It's a study by Tiepolo for his first religious commission,"
Norfolk, Conn., dealer Mia Weiner said of "The Crucifixion,"
$95,000, a sepia drawing that is preparatory for the circa 1723
painting in San Martino, Burano. Found in a salesroom in the
United States, the drawing, previously in a German collection,
relates to another sketch in the collection of the Fogg Museum at
Harvard.
"It's been cleaned and authenticated," Tuxedo Park, N.Y., dealer
Robert Simon said of the dramatic Mannerist canvas dominating his
back wall. "Susanna Before Daniel," a 571/2 by 773/8 -inch oil on
canvas by Jacopo Palma, called Palma Giovane, was exhibited in
1920 before being lost for generations.
"We're known for French painting," said New York dealer Richard
Schillay, who managed to tuck an American Stuart Davis abstract
oil painting from the 1940s and an Allen Tucker Maine Coast view
into a display that included works by Albert Marquet, the Swiss
painter Emile Bressler, and Pablo Picasso.
Spanierman Gallery of New York featured "Kimono Girl," a loosely
brushed, Japanesque portrait of circa 1897 by Charles Webster
Hawthorne (1872-1930). The 301/4- by 241/2-inch oil on canvas was
formerly in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.
Charlecote, Kansas City, Mo.
"We start at Fourteenth Century illuminated manuscripts and
go up to Art Deco prints," said California dealer Leila Lyons, who
offered a meticulously drawn and colored plate from a Fifteenth
Century Book of Hours, "The Angel Announcing to The Shepherd," for
$10,500.
"One of the most exciting periods in mapmaking was the turn of
the Eighteenth Century," said Danielle Ann Millican, a Floral
Park, N.J., dealer who has been collecting maps and prints for
the past 25 years. For the Connoisseur's Fair, she brought 29
plates from the 1708 Dutch atlas, Harmonia Marcrocosmia.
"We've sold quite a few already," said her husband, Rand, holding
up four maps of the heavens, Ptolemaic to Copernican in their
perspective.
"More than half of our exhibitors had good shows," said Bill
Caskey. Caskey-Lees returns to New York in January to host its
annual Ceramics Fair at the New York Academy of Design.
"The Connoisseur's Antiques Fair is a high-quality show
consisting of American dealers only. We have a real commitment to
sustaining it," said Lisa Freeman, echoing the convictions of her
colleagues.
