Dover House Antiques was a long way from its hometown of Louisville, Ky. It brought a pair of Hitchcock-style children’s chairs and they also had a stack of four firkins, in differing old colors.
Review and Photos by Rick Russack
QUECHEE, VT. – What a difference a few days makes. Greg Hamilton’s 29-dealer show took place on February 18. It was a bright, sunny day with temperatures in the 50s. A few days earlier, a blizzard dumped 24 inches of snow in the neighborhood. Cabin Fever certainly seems to be the right name for the show. A good-size crowd was waiting when the show opened and sold tags started appearing almost immediately.
Hamilton has owned the show for about five years now, but the Cabin Fever show is 40 years old this year. It has moved around a bit over the years, and there have been changes in ownership, but it has always been in the same area, at the same time of the year.
The cherry Queen Anne desk was in the booth of Martin Ferrick, Lincolnville, Maine. It was priced at $2,400.
Hamilton also manages the Vermont Antique Dealers’ Association show as well as the Stratton Mountain show during Vermont Antiques Week. He’s been in the antique business since working for Richard Oliver in about 1981.
It is a good country show with plenty of primitives, country furniture, stoneware, pewter, prints and maps, early glass, early ceramics, redware, toys, Dedham pottery and textiles. Judging by the amount of business done, it would seem that dealers priced their merchandise realistically. There was some good formal American furniture, as well as some good early English furniture and some unexpected items.
One of the most unusual items in the show probably would not have appealed to everyone who attended the show. It was a glass lamp with a shade of black and purple bows and fabrics, with a decorative fringe of purple and white glass beads. Jean Tudhope, Back Door Antiques, East Middlebury, Vt., owned it and she thought it might have come from a brothel. Another opinion said funeral home. The buyer can decide.
One often sees so-called memory jugs, decorated with bits and pieces of this and that. Blue Farm Antiques, Franklin, N.Y., had what might be the all-time best of the type. Underneath all the decoration was a blue transfer decorated Staffordshire teapot. It was coated with a brown clay (?) and decorated with an incredible assortment of “things,” including a pair of very small dolls, bits of costume jewelry, seashells, broken pieces of ceramics, assorted other things and attached to the spout was a small tin candle holder. It was in good condition and all the attachments seemed intact. Phil Warish, the proprietor, said it came from Schoharie County in New York and he was asking $450 for it.
Kyle Scanlon, Essex, Vt., said that he was having a good show and had also done well during the set-up.
Judd Gregory, a Dorset, Vt., dealer who specializes in Eighteenth-Nineteenth Century American and English furniture had taken a few years off from doing shows but has started up again. He brought some nice early English furniture, including a pair of shield-back mahogany armchairs, circa 1810-20, inlaid with bone. The price, $495 for the pair, seemed reasonable. He sold several items. Gregory also deals in vintage automobiles and had a list of some of his current offerings, including a 1977 Mercedes 450SL convertible, in good driving condition, priced at $8,500.
New to the show was Anne Hall, a print dealer from Sturbridge, Mass., with a wide selection of vintage prints of animals, birds and flowers. She also had a wonderful poster of a Berkshire hog that had been printed in Germany. Hall is a second-generation print dealer, having grown up in California, where her father was a print dealer and her mother an antiquarian book dealer.
Ian McKelvey, South Windham, Conn., had three large, blue-decorated stoneware jugs. One had incised decoration and each was priced at about $345. He had some early lighting, treen and a wonderful carved wooden horse, in red paint, that he priced at $2,800. Kyle Scanlon, Essex, Vt., was one of the dealers who said that he had good preshow business, saying that he sold a painting and several other things.
Greg Hamilton, who owns the show, was very enthusiastic a few days after the show. “The gate was about 300, which was the same as last year and that had been an improvement over previous years. Business was good for many people.
Judd Gregory sold several pieces of furniture and told me that it was one of his better shows recently. A lot of stoneware was sold and Mike Weinberg sold some samplers. Osgood sold a good painting and I sold the chest of drawers and some other things. Late in the day, a couple from California came in. They had just bought a house in the area and they were buying for that home. They filled a pick-up truck. Most of the dealers told me they had done well, which is always what I hope to hear.”
For more information, contact Greg Hamilton, Stone Block Antiques, 802-877-6668.
