The Tennessee State Fairgrounds, just south of Nashville’s downtown, was the new site for the long-running, twice-yearly Music Valley Antiques Show, October 30⁎ovember 2. Jenkins Show Management moved from a location near Opryland Resort to better accommodate the 100-plus dealer fall edition of the show, giving it a new permanent home in heated and air-conditioned buildings. Various conflicts with former locations made the move a necessity, according to show co-manager Jon Jenkins.
He said in a postshow interview, “The old location had become increasingly difficult, nearly impossible, to have a good show for the visitors, dealers and our show promotion company. The Tennessee State Fairgrounds has all the things we need to keep the show vibrant, including good on-site parking, food services, buildings built for exhibiting and proper services for the visitors and dealers.” He added, “With the buildings we can eliminate conflicts with weather, site logistics, services and the like. Music Valley Antiques Show has, for 15 years, been moving into and out of downtown hotels, as new owners demanded; now it has found a good, permanent location.”
“We are so pleased with the response from the public and the dealers at this first time in this new site; the show was so well-received. The dealers accepted the challenge, set up beautiful booths, many saving very special pieces for the show, and sales were good,” co-manager Kay Puchstein said.
Just inside the entry was Tom Delach offering his collection of folk art, Americana and Native American artifacts. This Columbus, Ohio, dealer offered several early game boards, Seminole Indian dolls, an assortment of Navajo rugs and several oil on canvas paintings by American artists.
Liberty Tree Antiques, Camden, Maine, was beside Delach with its version of Americana, including a collection of early advertising pieces. Nineteenth Century painted furniture was a big part of its exhibit as well.
Munday and Munday, Benton, Ill., is a mother and daughter business with early earthenware as the primary focus of its collection. For the show the dealers were offering a wall of shelves filled with kitchen work dishes in mocha and yellowware. Over that display was an unusual hooked runner in dark colors with a sharp design of a vine with many different varieties of flowers pulled through the pattern. Their collection also featured vintage decorations for Halloween and Christmas.
MT Folk Art, Fulton, Ill., was offering the single most expensive object at the show, an early blanket chest in original paint decoration. Purchased at a country auction in Fulton County, it had been brought there in the Nineteenth Century from Pennsylvania, according to the family. The decorations included flags on a swirling red grain paint background. It was priced at $65,000.
Horn of Plenty Antiques is the combined business of Ohioans Debbie and John Schlichter and Dan and Vickie Dennis. Their offerings were early country-style antique furniture and home accessories. The biggest piece they offered was an 8-foot-tall step back hutch with glass light doors on top, a clear shelf at counter height and doors in the base. At the base of the uprights of the top portion, there were two very small drawers that were believed to be for candles and tinder used to light them.
Among the farthest traveled to be at the show were the Buckinghams from Burleson, Texas. Karen Buckingham was originally from Massachusetts; she moved to Texas many years ago, where she continued to collect antiques. The shows she does include Manchester, N.H., Brimfield, Mass., and Round Top, Texas, at Rifle Hall. Her taste runs to early painted pieces and country style with a Chippendale chest of drawers, a small blanket chest and a mule chest, all in old red milk paint.
Earth tones and plain aged plank walls created a Colonial period room setting for Pepperell, Mass., exhibitor Mary Elliott. She was offering a William and Mary tap table, an early settle bench and a bucket bench, which were so primitive and early they might have been pilgrims’ furnishings. Even the walls of her exhibit were for sale.
Mary deBuhr was also selling a set of walls. This Downers Grove, Ill., dealer had not just the planks, but three doors, a mantel and even the shelves from inside a closet included in her offering. She was also showing an early wing chair, ready and waiting for the upholsterer, and a settle bench.
Neal Blodgett, Higganum (Conn.) House Antiques came in with numerous small things. There were six cats in one small portion of his exhibit: three were a set of knock-down dummies, one was an individual knock-down dummy, another was a cast iron door stop and there was a book end as well.
As this was Tennessee †and Tennessee is known for its horses †there were dozens here: Higganum House had a pair as bookends; Debbie Schlichter had a little Tennessee Walking Horse riding toy from her home in Greenfield, Ohio; Kay Puchstein had a pull toy horse on top of a painted hutch she found near her Frankfurt, Ohio, home; out of Burr Oak, Mich., Lynn and Michael Worden’s equine was a riding toy made of papier mache hides with the leather trimmings still on it, and for sale at $325. Too small to ride, but just right for the very young equestrian to pull, was the model offered by Over Hill and Dale, the name of Paul Smith’s Harlan, Iowa, antiques business.
Peter Hunt was not at the show †he died decades ago †but some of his work was. Hunt was originally from New Jersey, where he worked as a painter and contractor, but with a very special style. Moving to Cape Cod in the middle of the Twentieth Century, he concentrated on his style of paint decorations for home furnishings. His work is now very popular and quite valuable. The chest of drawers offered by Charles Bachman, a Thornhill, Ohio, dealer, would have been a very simple cottage pine chest if not for Peter Hunt’s work, which raised the value to $1,300.
Mark Morris, Wadsworth, Ohio, was selling three farm animals: a pig, a lamb and a duck, all of which had nodding heads. These animals were too old for the bobble head dolls found on the back deck of cars today, but Morris speculated that while they were running on electric motors today, they could have sported windup, clockwork motors when new.
Traveling together from Brenham, Texas, were Michael Breeden and Ed Fulkerson. Each has his own business, but they set up together for this show with a collection that made the exhibit resemble a Nineteenth Century general store. There was a swivel rack for about 50 quilts, a store counter to display a cradle, stoneware and early glass. The back wall had, among other antique furnishings, a hutch or cupboard filled with a great variety of early merchandise.
Country Home magazine once again sponsored the show. Its principal visibility was in the very center of the show, with an exhibit produced by John and Debbie Melby from Eastport, Maine. The Melbys shop in Northeastern states and Canada, including the Maritime Provinces, for their very early primitives. Objects on view included a set of early ladder back chairs, a chest, dry sink and a painted hanging shelf in black paint.
Bette and Melvyn Wolf of Flint, Mich., brought their pewter collection; Roland Dellaire, Brockway, Penn., was offering a large assortment of face jugs from North Carolina; Cincinnati, Ohio, dealers Country Mouse-City Mouse shopped in England for much of its inventory, while Miller House, Carroll, Ohio, was showing early Ohio furniture and accessories.
Bobbie Pries, Westfield Center, Ohio, had country furniture, but Al Benting, of Benting and Jarvis, Barrington, N.H., had a more formal collection.
The show has a fine diversity of Americana covering a wide range of sophistication and almost 400 years of styles. There were even some dealers offering industrial and midcentury articles for the public’s consideration.
The second time for this location will be in its traditional time slot, February 19′2.
For more information, www.jenkinsshows.com or 317-598-0012.
